Coal news and updates

Another in a series of community discussions about what to do with the closed Mount Tom Power Station will be held Wednesday (Feb. 11) and this time, the owner of the former coal-burning plant will be represented.

 

The meeting will be from 6 to 8:45 p.m. at the Senior Center, 291 Pine St.

 

Carol Churchill, spokeswoman for GDF SUEZ Energy North America, said Thursday the company will have two representatives at the meeting. She said the company wasn't represented at the first meeting on Dec. 3 because it was told too late for anyone to attend.

 

The meetings are being held to discuss how the property should be reused and what a clean-up will entail, given the potential contaminants have entered the soil from years of operation of the plant on Route 5 north beside the Connecticut River.

 

The meetings are organized by the city, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a state agency, and Ninigret Partners, an economic development consultant from Providence, Rhode Island.

 

GDF SUEZ Energy North America closed the plant in December. It had operated only off and on for several years as the economics of burning coal to create energy clashed with the cheaper alternative of natural gas, Churchill said.

 

"It was economics, very difficult to compete with natural gas," Churchill has said.

 

The closing cost 28 employees their jobs.

 

GDF SUEZ Energy North America has offices in Boston, Houston, Chicago, Toronto and Mexico City.

 

Churchill, who works in the company's Boston office, said officials with GDF SUEZ Energy North America understand its responsibility to clean the site of potential contaminants. The company has yet to to decide what should be done with the property now that it has ceased being an energy generator, she has said.

 

The first "reuse" meeting drew about 60 people. Reuse ideas included selling it to the Holyoke Gas and Electric Department to run as a natural-gas provider and making it a mixed-use site.

 

Meeting organizers emphasized that next steps in terms of converting the site into another use are years away.

 

The meeting Wednesday will include presentations from consultants about the site's conditions and limitations, including time for questions, a discussion among those who attend about their goals for the site, and small group discussions.

 

Such "reuse" meetings are a continuation of a city process that began in 2011. The city appointed a citizens advisory group to discuss the future of the old coal plant, with the plant's closing even then considered by some to be inevitable given the turn away from coal burning in the region and the cheaper alternative of natural gas.

 

 

Source: http://www.masslive.com/