Town studies water demands of plant

The town has asked its engineering firm to evaluate the town's water system to see if it can provide a large quantity of water to the proposed wood-fired power plant in North Springfield.

http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20120301/NEWS02/703019912

Published March 1, 2012 in the Rutland Herald
Town studies water demands of plant

By Susan Smallheer
Staff Writer

SPRINGFIELD — The town of Springfield has asked its engineering firm to evaluate the town’s water system to see if it can contribute the hundreds of thousands of gallons of water the developers of the proposed wood-fired power plant says it needs to operate.

Town Manager Robert Forguites said that Aldrich & Elliot, P.C., the Essex Junction engineering firm that has done previous work on the town’s water system, would be conducting the evaluation

“We’ve been talking to them, but we do not have an analysis at this point,” said Forguites on Wednesday.

Winstanley Enterprises LLC of Concord, Mass., and Weston Solutions of Concord, N.H., want to build a 35 megawatt power plant on a 22-acre field next to Winstanley’s 36 Precision Drive, the former Fellows Corp. headquarters. Both the building and the power plant would be in the North Springfield Industrial Park.

Adam Winstanley has said that the project might need as much as 400,000 gallons of water a day from the town. The town’s water system would be supplemented by private wells.

Winstanley said that the project would buy the town’s now mothballed Davidson Hill water storage tank and water from the town then pump it during off-peak hours for use during the day.

The power plant needs large amounts of water for cooling, but the plant officials said its water usage (which would be largely lost to steam) would drop with the more customers it can get for its steam thermal loop in the industrial park.

Winstanley plans on drilling on its North Springfield property, as well as capturing rainwater off the roof of the Fellows building.

Forguites said that Winstanley is also considering asking for a permit to get water from the Black River.

Harry Henderson, the town’s public works director, said the town’s municipal system customers use about 800,000 gallons a day and the Winstanley request would represent about half of the town’s current usage.

While Adam Winstanley has said repeatedly the town’s peak water usage was 1.3 million gallons of water a day, Forguites said that occurred during the peak of the machine tool industry in Springfield, which was more than 30 years ago.

“Jeff (Strong) says at one point we were billing that much out, back at the time the plants were in full operation,” Forguites said Wednesday. He and Strong, the town’s water and sewer superintendent, met Wednesday afternoon.

Water has always been a hot topic in Springfield, and voters ousted a longtime chairman of the Select Board two years ago in large part of his support of selling the town’s original reservoir, the town-owned Weathersfield Reservoir.

That plan was soundly defeated, but without a water treatment plant, its water can’t be used for consumption, town officials have said. For the past 30 years or so, the town has relied on the Gilcrist and Chapman wells, located in a meadow along the Black River in North Springfield.

Henderson, the town’s public works director, said he had concerns about the amount of the town’s water that the power plant would use, but he referred all comments to Strong, who didn’t return telephone messages.

Henderson, who lives just over the town line in Chester, spoke out at Tuesday’s night Public Service Board’s hearing on the proposed North Springfield Sustainable Energy Project, saying he was concerned about the impact of heavy water withdrawal from the North Springfield aquifer on his own well.

Henderson said that while his home is about 3,000 feet from the proposed biomass plant, his well is about 1,300 feet from the proposed well fields for the power plant.

“I am concerned about any effects on my well, and others, in the area of influence of the withdrawals,” he told Ed McNamara, a hearing officer with the Public Service Board.

Henderson said on Wednesday that the state had a rigorous review process for commercial wells that withdraw more than 57,600 gallons daily from a shared aquifer.

Henderson has managed public water systems and said he had also owned a public water system in the past.

Henderson, like others at Tuesday’s hearing, urged that the board to include some kind of conditions to protect adjoining landowners with private water supplies.

He said that no one knows the impact of withdrawing large amounts of water, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, from the North Springfield site.

Kristi Morris, chairman of the Springfield Select Board, which hasn’t taken a public stand on the proposed power plant, said after the PSB hearing the board didn’t want to needlessly politicize the process of the plant’s review at this stage.

But he said the town had asked for the Aldrich & Elliott review about a month ago.

Aldrich & Elliott, formerly known as Forcier Aldrich and Associates Inc., had engineered and managed the recent ambitious upgrades to the Springfield water system, which raised rates about 56 percent.

Tuesday’s hearing was dominated by critics of the project, but there was a large contingent of supporters, including many local loggers, foresters and people in the timber industry, as well as local businesspeople.