Group Buys Claremont Incinerator

By Patrick O’Grady

Valley News Correspondent

Published: 12-29-2017 12:03 AM

Claremont — If the new owners of the shuttered waste-to-energy incinerator on Grissom Lane want approval to restart the plant, they will need to do more than have the Title V operating permit transferred from the previous owner, officials with the state Department of Environmental Services said on Thursday.

The Wheelabrator Technologies Inc. incinerator plant, which closed in September 2013 after 26 years of operation, was sold earlier this month for a fraction of its assessed value. The $37,000 sale price for the land, building and equipment — first reported by The Sullivan Report, a blog covering Claremont — is less than 2 percent of the plant’s 2016 assessment of $2 million; a year before that, the property’s assessment was more than $7 million.

Wheelabrator sold the plant to Power Investments LLC, of Farmington, N.H., according to the deed on file with the Sullivan County Registry of Deeds.

All inquiries to the company were referred to Energy Resources Group Vice President Keith Frisbee, who did not immediately respond to emails and phone messages. According to its website, Energy Resources Group has been in business since 1984 and “provides machining and general services to power generation facilities” to a variety of industries.

Wheelabrator’s five-year Title V operating permit, which verifies regulatory compliance with air emissions standards under the federal Clean Air Act, was renewed in May 2014 by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services’ Air Resources Division and remains valid, according to Gary Milbury, administrator of the Air Resources Division’s Permitting and Environmental Health Bureau.

When a facility is sold, Milbury said, the permit can be transferred fairly routinely through an administrative process.

But he added that each case is different and the amount of state DES review required before allowing a plant to restart varies.

If a facility is closed for more than two years, there is a “presumption” it is being shut down permanently, Milbury said, but in the case of the Claremont plant, Wheelabrator has continued filing regular reports and also has used the plant’s emergency generator.

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“We would need a review of the permit (after not operating for two years) based on what the reports say,” Milbury said. “Are those reports sufficient to prove they never intended to permanently cease operation? If they were to (want to) restart the incinerator, we would sit down and be sure everything is in place to continue complying with the permit.”

Officially, NHDES has not received any correspondence from Wheelabrator with respect to the sale, Milbury said.

The plant’s other permit for solid waste management also is valid; however there are more regulations that must be met by a new owner. These include financial assurance, background checks on company employees and training for operators of the plant. Financial assurance shows that if the company stops operating the plant, there is enough money to properly shut it down.

“They would have to apply to take over the permit from Wheelabrator,” said Todd Moore, administrator of the Solid Waste Management Bureau at NHDES. “It really depends on what they want to do. It is just too early to tell at this point.”

In a statement released on Thursday night, an area environmental group that is opposed to incineration as a means of waste disposal again called for the plant to be dismantled and for residents to vigorously oppose any effort to reopen it.

“There is no need for Sullivan County to get entangled in another incinerator contract, and there is no need for Claremont to continue as a host community for the incinerator industry,” said the group, Working on Waste.

Dismantling the plant is in the “best interest” of the city and county and aggressively pursuing increased recycling initiatives along with alternative energy sources such as wind and solar is a more environmentally sound approach, Working on Waste said.

In April 2015, Wheelabrator put the plant up for auction, where it sold for $1.63 million, but the deal fell through.

About a year later, an investor group from Kentucky expressed interest in buying the plant to establish a recycling center where industrial equipment, potentially including some of the equipment at the plant, is refurbished and sold.

The company ultimately decided not to pursue the purchase.

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.

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