Now biomass is the environment's enemy?

When environmental organizations pushed Washington voters to approve their renewable energy Initiative 937, they touted biomass energy — incinerated wood waste — as one of their preferred alternatives to fossil fuel. They reasoned that biomass energy plants would help clear forests of flammable wood debris from dead and diseased timber, put idled loggers and millworkers back to work and produce cleaner, more affordable energy.

But since voters narrowly approved the initiative in 2006, many of those same activists are battling against biomass projects.

They now claim that microscopic nanopartic...