Hall will speak Nov. 29

The Northwest Iowa Group of The Sierra Club in association with the Save Union County Committee announces the next in a series of public awareness workshops concerning the proposed "green" Hyperion Energy Center in Union County. This meeting, per popular request to hold such a meeting in the southern part of the county, will be held in the North Sioux City Community Center located in the Fire Station at 205 Sodrac Drive, North Sioux City at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 29, and will feature Karen Hall of Rapid City as the speaker.

This workshop will be open to the public as well as the media and will serve to continue an emphasis on refinery related concerns for the entire tri-state area.

There were numerous requests for another presentation by Ms. Hall, a graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines. She is an environmental engineer who worked for many years at the Flint Hills Resources oil refinery in Rosemount, MN and has extensive experience in the environmental processes and issues surrounding oil refining, including human health risk assessment, environmental data review, and environmental management systems.

Ms. Hall's presentation will begin with a description of the refining process in general. She will also discuss concerns that should be addressed during the permitting process and, finally, will answer questions from those in attendance.

In addition to her work in refineries, Karen was a founding partner in Bostrom Hall Engineering, a Minnesota environmental consulting firm, and most recently worked for the South Dakota National Guard, where she also did statewide environmental compliance assessment and reporting. More recently she has published her first novel, Unreasonable Risk, a thriller about sabotage in an oil refinery, and she is currently working on a sequel set in Lead/Deadwood's hard rock gold mining industry.