Alachua will not send letter supporting biomass plant

Plans for a new biomass plant in Alachua County hit a speed bump in February, as the Public Service Commission (PSC), a governor-appointed five-member commission that facilitates utility use, delayed its approval of the project.

 On Monday, Josh Levine, project manager for the biomass plant, also known as the Gainesville Renewable Energy Center (GREC), made his case to the city of Alachua, looking for a letter of support to go back to the Public Services Commission with.

  Ed Regan, assistant general manager for strategic planning at Gainesville Regional Utilities, expressed the importance of the plant and how Alachua could help get it done.

  “What would be the risky thing would be not to do it,” Regan said. “It wasn’t being communicated to the PSC staff, so we’re going to go back and try to do a better job and a warm fuzzy may help.”

  The city commission made a motion to not send a letter of support. But before the commission took a vote, Levine and Regan withdrew their request.

  Commissioner Jean Calderwood said she didn’t want to send a negative message to the PSC but didn’t want to take a stand on the issue before the PSC weighed in.

  “My position is neutral,” Calderwood said. “My position is I would like for the Public Service Commission to make their decision based on the information that Gainesville Regional Utilities, City of Gainesville and GREC is providing to them, not to harm or injure your position with them but simply let it stand on its own merits.”

  Other commissioners said they needed more information before making a decision.

  Commissioner Gary Hardacre said he wanted to wait until the city staff had time to process the new information and make a recommendation.

  Two issues stood in the way of Alachua offering a letter of support.

 “What it boils down to is … water and trucks,” Mayor Bonnie Burgess said.

The biomass plant’s planned site is south of Alachua off of U.S. 441. The water, 1.4 million gallons per day, pumped for the plant will come out of the same ground water that Alachua uses. And most of the traffic, about 130 to 150 trucks will be heading up and down U.S. 441 en route to the plant or back out to I-75. It breaks down to one truck driving down U.S. 441 every six minutes and one truck going up U.S. 441 every six minutes.  

 “I don’t see any trucks going toward Gainesville, and most of the people that are going to be serviced from this plant live in Gainesville,” Burgess said. “It’s like you’re using us to get the trucks to the plant, but it’s servicing citizens in another city.”

 Levine tried to answer the commissioners’ concerns about both traffic and water.

 Levine said a study of a section of U.S. 441 just south of Alachua showed that the biomass plant would only increase the capacity from 61 percent to 62 percent and would not change the level of service. But the study did not have statistics on the stretch of U.S. 441 that runs through Alachua.

  “We don’t need a study,” Hardacre said. “We know that we have some issues, and we have them right around the interstate, just north of the interstate. They’re not going to get any better and your route will have a significant impact on us.”

  Hardacre also expressed concerns about the area’s groundwater.

  “Right now, we’re losing water; the springs are drying up,” Hardacre said.

 Levin said the 1.4 million gallons per day won’t have that great of an impact.

 “We’ve conducted a significant amount of analysis,” Levin said. “Our draw down is almost not even registering on the models.”