Thursday, May 14, 2009

Ministry of the Environment Accepts Collingwood Ethanol

Company takes aggressive action to address noise and odour issues

Collingwood, Ontario, May14, 2009 - Collingwood Ethanol today announced that the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) has accepted the company’s Odour Abatement Plan.

The plan submitted to MOE on May 6, 2009 identified about 30 specific actions that the company could take to reduce odours.

“Many of these items are refinements of the Nacan Wet Mill facility that existed prior to the company’s purchase of the facility, some deal with refinement of housekeeping practices, and some are related to building ventilation,” says Martin Kazmir, General Manager, Collingwood Ethanol. “Several items require a substantial financial investment for the installation of additional control equipment, which we are committed to implementing.”

The company is starting implementation of the plan immediately and proactively putting in place other measures over and above MOE expectations to expedite the work and achieve more immediate results for the community.

“In light of our desire to expedite the completion of the odour abatement measures we propose to implement, and in consideration of the upcoming summer activities taking place in Collingwood this summer,” says Kazmir, “we have decided that the right thing to do is to voluntarily and temporarily shut down the plant as of June 30, 2009 until all work is substantially complete. We presented this idea to MOE and their response was that they appreciate this extra effort.”

Starting in mid-June the plant will commence the shutdown process that is expected to be completed by the end of day on Tuesday June 30, 2009.

“This will be a phased process,” adds Kazmir. “The mid-June date for commencing a shutdown has been chosen after taking into consideration health and safety concerns for an orderly shutdown, impact on employees and our current contractual commitments.”

Further, the pellet mill has been identified in the odour assessment report as a source of odour emitted into the atmosphere at the plant, so effective immediately the plant will cease operations of the pellet mill on weekends until odour abatement measures planned for the unit are substantially completed.

With respect to addressing noise issues, Collingwood Ethanol confirmed that as of May 7th, the company has completed the installation of noise abatement equipment and will be submitting a report regarding this installation to the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) on May 14th.

“While we are confident that we have now addressed existing noise issues, I want to assure the community that if any new significant noise sources arise in the future as a result of our post-abatement acoustic audit or otherwise, they will be assessed and we will take appropriate action to address them.” says Kazmir, “We are committed to making things right once and for all.”


About Collingwood Ethanol

Collingwood Ethanol, L.P. began its operations in the summer of 2006 converting a wet mill starch plant into a 52 million litres per year ethanol plant. As a result of the process used to manufacture ethanol, the plant also produces innovative environmentally friendly co-products such as Amaizeingly Green, the company’s 100 per cent natural corn gluten meal fertilizer.

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