The man behind a plan to put a $20 million food-to-waste energy plant on North Division Street in Ansonia declared the project dead Thursday.
Chris Timbrell, of Brooklyn-based Greenpoint Energy Partners, said city officials haven’t entertained the idea since residents, and then several Aldermen, raised doubts about the project at public meetings last year.
“We have tried repeatedly to meet with the mayor and his advisers, and to discuss ways of addressing the concerns that have been voiced, and then agree (on) a way forward,” Timbrell wrote in an email. “He has been unwilling to meet with us, so the project for all purposes, is now dead.”
The project was first proposed in 2011, during the administration of former Mayor James Della Volpe.
The facility would have been built on a triangular plot of land next to the public works and WPCA complex at the end of North Division Street.
Food waste, mainly from supermarkets, would have been trucked in and broken down into methane gas, which would then have been used to generate electricity. Scroll down for more background.
Timbrell on Thursday said his company is now looking to put the digester — with its jobs and tax payments — in another community.
According to a July 13 letter from the Connecticut Green Bank to Timbrell, funding for the project will officially run out Aug. 26 — at the end of a 45-day extension for the city’s benefit.
In a reply letter Timbrell sent a day later, he hoped the city would be prompted “to take one last look at the merits of this project, and perhaps sit down with us and you and agree a way forward.”
But that didn’t happen.
“This was an initiative that would have bought a $25 million capital investment into the City of Ansonia: creating jobs and increasing the tax base plus the associated environmental and energy impacts,” Timbrell said in an email. “We are now actively working … to identify alternative sites for the project.”
The documents are posted below.
Background
As it was designed, the 1‑megawatt facility would accept up to 50,000 tons of food waste from the area per year.
Microbes would break down the food waste into methane gas, which would then be used to generate electricity for the city to use.
The $20 million plant would employ eight people full-time and would receive six 30-ton trucks full of food waste per day. Four trucks stuffed with compost —- the byproduct of the digestion process -— would be carted away daily.
The energy generated by the plant would power the Water Pollution Control Authority’s waste water treatment facility and up to five other municipal buildings.
Timbrell estimated the city would save about $250,000 annually on electricity costs and get about $175,000 in tax revenue from the plant yearly.
