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The University of Maine and Casella Waste Systems have renegotiated price limits of landfill gas to be piped from Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town to the university’s Steam Plant.
Janet Waldron, UMaine’s vice president for administration and finance, said Wednesday the deal is under “final legal review” from both parties.
In September, Waldron told The Maine Campus that terms of a December 2010 contract with Casella were being renegotiated “because of the low gas markets.”
Don Meagher, Casella’s manager of planning and development, said the price floor is now set at $3.50 per million metric British thermal units (mmBtu). The price ceiling is $9 per mmBtu.
A main change from the 2010 contract is that the Steam Plant will now be retrofitted to burn landfill gas with university money. In the 2010 contract, Casella would have paid no more than $500,000 to reimburse UMaine for those costs.
In exchange for paying for retrofitting, Meagher said UMaine gains 92 percent of the project’s “environmental attributes” at the landfill. That includes carbon-offset credits of the project, which could be sold in certain markets. The other 8 percent goes to the city of Old Town.
The original contract said UMaine would receive only 50 percent of the landfill’s environmental attributes.
“The $500,000 is a capital improvement to our existing infrastructure, having a lasting positive asset value to the University regardless of funding source,” Waldron wrote in an email. “There is a possible offset from the sale of carbon credits in the future.”
Meagher said those improvements will enable the university to use natural gas in high-demand times, such as in the winter, when there may not be enough landfill gas coming through the pipe to sustain larger university heating needs at peak hours.
The university retains 100 percent of environmental attributes from the Steam Plant’s switch from fossil fuel to non-fossil fuel that they were guaranteed under the original contract, Meagher said.
Jeremy Labbe, engineer and environmental compliance manager for Casella, said in order to accommodate the landfill gas pipeline’s beginning, a large gas flare will be moved to a southern portion of the landfill’s property. He said that requires an air license, applied for earlier this fall.
Under the December 2010 contract, a timeline said the pipeline’s preliminary design would be completed by April 2011, with construction beginning between September 2011 and March 2012. Meagher said the delay for renegotiating has pushed the schedule back about a year.
The original contract shows a proposed route of the approximately 6-mile pipeline leading east out of the landfill and crossing under Interstate 95, running south parallel to the interstate until meeting Gilman Falls Road, then going slightly southeast, crossing a bridge over the Stillwater River. Shortly thereafter, it would take another turn south and follow most of College Avenue extended from west Old Town to the Steam Plant.
Meagher said that is still the pipeline’s “preferred” route. He also said he thought the company would be submitting permit applications by May 2012.
“I’m very excited,” Labbe said. “Now that they’re done negotiations, that’s when the rubber hits the road, and I’ll have the opportunity to work on the design and permitting of this pipeline.”
