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LLEG -- 04/23/2007 Union Leader Newspaper Article (Berlin NH Project)

WEBLINK: http://www.unionleader.com/default.aspx?storyDate=2007-04-23

Berlin wood-chip plant could mean 500 jobs
By DENIS PAISTE
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
5 hours, 4 minutes ago

Laidlaw Energy Group President Michael B. Bartoszek is confident his company's proposed wood-chip plant in Berlin will spur creation of 500 new jobs.

Although the 50-megawatt plant will provide about 40 direct jobs on-site at the former Fraser Mill, it will have a ripple effect, creating a need for truckers and loggers to supply wood.

"It really is a great economic mover for the community. You can't replace it, you can't outsource it," Bartoszek said.

The plant, which would be built around an existing, 11-story boiler, would use about 500,000 tons of wood chips a year. The $100 million Babcock & Wilcox boiler was installed 14 years ago.

"We got an existing boiler there that's appropriate for the project; we've got to take the bottom of it and put in a new grate and some advanced emissions control equipment to bring the emissions down to the levels we're talking about," Bartoszek said in an interview at the New Hampshire Union Leader Friday.


The former Burgess Pulp Mill in Berlin, where 14 years ago the city celebrated the installation of a $100m boiler that secured hundreds of jobs for more than a decade. The boiler is now at the center of a plan that could return 500 jobs to the region. The 500,000 pound, 11-story boiler is suspended from above nearly filling the tallest building in the photo.

"All these activities have essentially happened at the facility already: wood combustion, turbine generator ... and fuel yard. We've got to reconfigure them to put this plant online."

He expects to be able to do that by the end of 2008.

The closing of the pulp mill last May left more than 200 mill workers without jobs and questions about how the city would deal with the blow to its tax base.

Berlin Mayor Robert Danderson is enthusiastic about the Laidlaw project.

"The 500 jobs they are talking about would be spread out around the county," he said.

"Every time you employ someone with a decent wage, it benefits someone else in the area. I'm very happy," he said.

But Danderson said he is concerned that Laidlaw Energy Group appears to be a penny stock, meaning its shares are worth less than a dollar each.

"Most of the independent power producers that I have seen are usually opportunists, and I just want to make sure they have the money to do what they say they're going to do," Danderson said, "because nothing is worse than getting your hopes up because they don't have the money to do what they say they are going to do."

Bartoszek said LLEG's first biomass project in upstate New York should be completed by the end of this year.

"We're converting an existing power plant to low-emission advanced biomass fuel and that plant is expected to commence operations later this year. It's still going through the permitting process," he said.

Bartoszek was accompanied by former Congressman Charlie Bass, who is a hired advisor the firm. Bass said the local logging industry, which supplied 1 million tons of wood a year to the pulp mill, would have to be rebuilt because workers dispersed after the plant closure.

"It's going to be an industry that has to be regenerated, and that's a challenge," Bass said. "But it's new employment, It's electricity, it's biomass energy generation, and it's a kind of product that isn't really economically elastic like paper was. Electricity's going to be needed. These jobs are going to be there, They're going to be very stable employment."

An ethanol plant could be built on the site using excess steam from the wood-chip powered plant, but the plant could stand alone and still be able to pay its own way, Bartoszek said.

Danderson said in addition to the impact of new jobs on the community, the power plant would bring a sizeable new property tax assessment.

"That's something that's very, very positive," he said. "Another aspect that is very important for the state is that we have a renewable resource for electricity.

"The fact that the 50-megawatt plant is also talking about selling steam to other forms of manufacturing, that might attract other industries into that area," Danderson said.

The Berlin mayor recognizes that not everyone is in favor of a new industrial use for the former mill, with some favoring a park.

"I understand why they feel that way, but parks usually don't bring revenues," Danderson said. "Parks bring expenses. I think it's important that it stays industrial. I could never see it being residential, and I question its value in many other uses."

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