A proposed food-to-energy digestion facility drew deep skepticism from Ansonia residents at a public forum on the project Thursday.
About 30 people showed up for an update on the project from Chris Timbrell, a principal partner at Greenpoint Energy Partners, who said the $20 million facility would provide about $175,000 in annual tax revenue and deliver $250,000 a year in electricity savings to the city.
But residents responded with a myriad of concerns and questions, ranging from worries over increased truck traffic to anxiety that the view from the city’s Riverwalk would be spoiled by the “monstrous” plant, which would stand next to an existing waste water treatment facility.
The project has been on the drawing board for about three years. The administration of former Mayor James Della Volpe and Greenpoint came to a non-binding understanding calling for the company to lease the 2‑acre site for $1 a year — should the company be granted a laundry list of required approvals from state and local authorities.
Ironically, it was Della Volpe’s chief lieutenant, Tara Kolakowski, who had the toughest questions for Timbrell, grilling him and a lawyer working to get the project approved for about 10 minutes during Thursday’s forum.
The skepticism, though, wasn’t limited to staunch Democrats.
For example, Alderwoman Joan Radin, a Republican who represents the city’s Fifth Ward, also raised a number of questions about the proposal.
Details
Timbrell and others involved in the project hosted a similar forum last January, where they explained, in great detail, their plans to put an anaerobic digestion facility on the currently city-owned land.
The facility would accept up to 50,000 tons of food waste from the area per year, break it down in the plant, and recycle it as energy for the city to use.
Click here for a good explainer story from the CT Mirror about the specifics of the process.
Timbrell told residents Thursday the scope of the proposal has decreased since last year’s forum — instead of producing 2 megawatts of power, it would produce one.
He said the $20 million facility would employ eight to 10 people full-time.
The plant would consist of a handful of buildings and large tanks, the biggest of which would rise 60 feet above the ground.
Half of the power generated would run the waste water treatment plant and the rest would be used to power five municipal buildings to be “nominated” by the city.
The plant, if approved, would receive six 30-ton trucks full of food waste per day. Four truckfuls of compost — the byproduct of the digestion process — would be carted away daily.
The truck trips would be restricted to the hours between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Though Timbrell said most of the financing to build the plant is in place, the proposal still requires approvals from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Connecticut Siting Council, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, and, last but not least, local land use boards.
We Don’t Know About This …
After Timbrell went over the project’s basic details for about 15 minutes, residents asked him questions for more than an hour.
Radin said that while trucks coming from the south could exit Route 8 onto Pershing Drive and make the relatively short trip to the plant without disrupting area traffic too much, trucks coming from the north wouldn’t have such an easy route.
“There’s no straight way through except by my store,” Radin, the owner of Lear Pharmacy on Wakelee Avenue, said.
She also doubted Timbrell’s assurances that the facility won’t smell.
“There has to be some kind of an odor,” she said.
Resident Robert Turschmann asked whether the city could get a cut of the tipping fees generated by the plant. Timbrell told him the city hasn’t asked, but anything is negotiable.
Many residents wondered what would happen if the plant went bust, or didn’t generate the income it’s expected to, worrying that the city would just be left with an industrial eyesore — of which it already has plenty.
“We’ll still have to pay the property taxes,” Timbrell said. “We’ll still have to employ people to run the plant.”
Resident Jason St. Jacques peppered Timbrell with a number of questions before saying the 60-foot digestion tank would be a “monstrosity” which would spoil the view from the Riverwalk along North Division Street.
“I just can’t support this,” he said.
“I’m not here to shove something down your throats that you won’t like or would be bad for the town,” Timbrell said.
Will Mayor Lauretti Steal This Idea?
Kolakowski asked Timbrell and Lee Hoffman, a lawyer working with Greenpoint to get the project approved, for more details on the electricity the plant would generate for the city.
“Will our rate always be less than what we would pay at the current UI rate?” Kolakowski asked.
Timbrell said that could be worked out with the city.
Kolakowski wasn’t convinced.
“Do we have a guarantee that it will always be less?” she asked.
While not giving that specific guarantee, Timbrell said the city would save money on an “all-in” basis because its electricity rate wouldn’t be tied to the price of natural gas and it would also save on things like transmission costs.
Kolakowski also wondered whether, if more facilities like the one proposed for Ansonia are built, whether Ansonia’s would fall by the wayside.
“There’s a very smart mayor in Shelton, Mayor Mark Lauretti. If he says ‘If Ansonia’s doing this, I can do this, I’ll put one right off Route 8’ … How are we not going to get cannibalized?” Kolakowski asked. “Where’s our protection in this?”
“If I knew what was going to happen 5, 10, 20 years from now I wouldn’t be here, I’d be in Vegas betting at the sports book,” Hoffman shot back.
The lawyer also said the state will be compiling a “solid waste management plan” to limit the facilities to one every 20 or 30 miles.
They’re Going To Disney World
The planned facility is still years away from fruition.
In addition to the permits required from state and federal agencies, as well as local land use boards, the city’s Aldermen would have to approve leasing the land to the digestion facility.
City officials have tentatively planned a trip to Orlando, Fla. next month to see an anaerobic digester there, one of only three such plants currently in operation on the continent.
The Orlando plant — which handles nearly three times the waste than the one planned for Ansonia — is operated by Harvest Power, the same company Greenpoint says will operate the plant it’s building.
It opened in February. Among its first customers was the Walt Disney World Resort.
Though the trip is only weeks away, city officials couldn’t say after Thursday’s meeting who will be going on the trip, for how long, when the trip would occur, or how much it would cost taxpayers, if anything.
