The following commentary was published in the North Bay Business Journal on Monday June 15, 2009.

Debate of Dutra Petaluma asphalt plant turns emotional

COMMENTARY: Brad Bollinger, Business Journal Editor in Chief

Business and community leaders are having a hard time recalling a debate that spun out as far and as quickly as the one over The Dutra Group’s proposed asphalt plant in Petaluma.

In a matter of months at the end of a five-year process, opposition has spiked, and support by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors went from 4-to-1 in favor to 3-to-2 against during a testy public hearing Tuesday.

When a supervisor responds to critics with a four-letter word – as one did last week, albeit not with the worst of them – you know things have gotten emotional.

And that’s the problem. Emotions – especially when they descend into vitriol and personal attacks – do not make for sound public decision making.

So, as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan is reported to have said, “You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.” Just what are the facts in the Dutra case?

First, let it be stipulated that the company operated an asphalt plant on the Petaluma River for more than two decades.

The city survived.

The proposed new plant nearby is in keeping with an industrial heritage along the river, although it would be technologically and environmentally far superior to anything that has come before it.

One news account said “the county planning staff report cited calculations done by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District that levels measured by the cancer index, chronic hazard index and acute health risk index ‘are all below the adopted significance levels established by the air district.’”

This is from the same, very tough air district that brings us the annual “Spare the Air” advisories prohibiting the use of a household fireplace.

No pushover, for sure.

The county planning staff also estimates that trucking asphalt and aggregate around and into the county to support and improve the infrastructure everyone needs would generate 112 percent to 123 percent greater greenhouse gas emissions than the new plant.

A question for Al Gore: Aren’t we supposed to be reducing, not increasing, GHG emissions? Oh, never mind.

And forget, too, about the 1,000 well-paying construction jobs the plant would support, the firehouse Dutra would build and the 19 acres of wetlands restoration – half the site – to which the company committed.

If it was hard to tell in last week’s debate who are the true environmentalists and community-minded people, it’s because it is.

You decide.