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PUBLIC POWER AGENCY MEETING MINUTES
October 25, 2006
Members Present: John Montone, Chairperson, Timothy C. Lattimore, William Graney, Mike Luksa, Vijay Mital
Members Absent: Robert M. Buschman (called had another meeting), Robert Bergan (called had another meeting), Frank DeOrio (called had another meeting)
Staff Present: Michael Long and Nancy Hussey
Meeting of the Public Power Agency of October 25, 2006 called to order by Chairperson John Montone. Roll call taken, as stated above there are two vacancies. Agenda passed out by Chairperson. Motion made by Tim Lattimore to approve minutes of March 15, 2006 and Mike Luksa seconded. As pointed out by Counsel Nancy Hussey only Tim Lattimore, William Graney and Mike Luksa were allowed to vote on minutes, as they were the only members that we present at that meeting.
Under communications the Chairperson stated that he received an email as did other members from Robert Bergan and since Mr. Bergan moved out of the City he is no longer eligible to be on the agency. A new person is needed and that will be discussed under new business.
Mike Long brought the agency up to speed on the SMSI grant program, the first round we were turned down, and 220 some odd communities applied and they had about $2 million dollars to give out. We had the American Planning Association Conference in Auburn, one of the staff members from the Department of State who works with it, we talked with her about the application and I think they like the concept, they liked the project, but they funded the group down in Tompkins County, the Mega Power ended up getting a grant. They are more seasoned they have been in the business a little longer. They thought that we had a very good application and this year they are increasing the program to $50 million dollars. This year we updated the grant application that met today’s processes and Bruce Sherman from the
Planning Department went and got letters in support from John and updated numbers as well as some of the letters of support that we got before from Senator Nozzolio, Assemblyman Finch and others to make the package a little stronger. We probably won’t hear until next fall, but in our initial application we had proposed sequence of events, we have a joint committee City and County formed, we did an RFQ, we did an interview process, we selected the firm and all of these milestones we put in this new application as being completed so we are down to the point of implementing the project. It is a good next step.
Chairperson Montone wants to meet with the County to communicate with the three consulting engineers and ask for an RFP or proposal from them. Mike Long stated from what he remembered there was some information in there that talked about hiring Keith Pitman to put together a scope of services. He didn’t know if that was contracted or if that was a donation. The $25,000 we got was sent in for reimbursement of past expenses. Mike is going to check with Comptroller to see if we can refund some of the money that was spent out of a prior year’s budget, it may have gone back into General Fund. This may require City Council approval to get refunded back into the Power Agency. We need to know if this is a $5,000 or $20,000 deal and John said he would communicate with Keith, get a quote
from him, tell him exactly what we want to do, put a study together to look at the County and City like a distribution system. Would like to put Keith Pitman on the preliminary studies to evaluate the other consultants once we get prices back from them. Don’t know how much that will cost but this is a good way to lead towards that while waiting to hear about the grant and we will then have our figures in place.
Chairperson Montone stated that last month Kamayr Zaldeh from ECOTS did a presentation on September 27, 2006 on the City’s bio-digester and bio-energy project to get everyone up to speed where he was because at the March meeting there were questions about what are we paying for, what has he done, where are we at and so forth and during that time period he has put together quite a good study in a draft form. John passed out a copy of the draft study and there are some questions in there that he had presented to Frank DeOrio, quite a long list of questions that he needed to get to the next milestone and we need to get those answered by Frank. Mike stated a meeting was held with the New York Power Authority, Dave Laney, and they talked about the concept of instead of using our sludge incinerator to burn
sludge, use the sludge as the main source of fuel for the bio-digester and it looks like it makes more sense through the digester process than to spend the amount of energy it takes to get rid of the sludge and we also have contracts right now that the City brings in the sludge so it is a revenue source for the City but if we can get energy out of it as an end product, that will be an even better solution. The City estimates that it may be too difficult for it to pursue manure as primary feedstock for the digester. Therefore, it does not intend to build its business based on the processing of manure feed stock. Instead it will offer manure-processing service as an option to the farmers. Right now the County is doing the manure one. The City is interested in digestion of brown grease and liquid food waste from industrial and commercial businesses near Auburn. However, it has decided to postpone it procurement and use as feedstock until the next
phase of the project when the project facilities are expended. The City is interested in building a regional digester using municipal sludge as the primary feed stock, use of sludge as feed stock can generate significant energy cost savings as well as new revenue opportunities from sale of energy and additional tipping fees for sludge coming. The City has requested that ECOTS focus its efforts on design of a regional digester for the processing of organic municipal sludge. Mike also said that they got together with Dave Laney recently and the initial feasibility study that they did on the incinerator for the combined heat power the numbers aren’t as rosy and that is what prompted us to look at this as another use of that sludge. We are talking substantial savings here just for the City. The New York Power Authority will finance this project for us if we want them to but according to ECOTS they already have people in line to do financing. Mike said that
the energy credits are not even considered as part of the formula. John said they are saleable credits that we can put out on the market and the City would be paid. That would be the first source of revenue coming in this committee.
Mike stated that the City has begun processing for the second installment for ECOTS based on the submission of this next milestone, they also submitted a request to NYSERDA as a matching grant, so we come up with $18,750 and NYSERDA comes up with $18,750 to match and the County is also contributing so basically the City and County split the NYSERDA match, so it really is a 3 way project. John stated that the difference between the County and City is the County has 2 or 3 farms with cow manure and they are going to produce all their power on site. Once the City is up and running we will see how that operation is and see if we want to expand into the manure. John explained the megawatts. John said this could be built in a year and a half and Mike Luksa asked is it a year and a half from today or year
and a half once they decide that this is going to work. Now you are saying this pushes the digester even more because we are not going to get into heat because it isn’t as efficient once they got the numbers. Where are we on this? Mike Long stated that the combined heat and power was started then we got some advice in terms of early engineering, we actually got $2.2 million dollars of grants towards building that project, so what he anticipates taking the information that was generated by the initial study, combine with digester and try and slide those grants into this project. John said the money is there. Mike stated that the County got their million dollars for the digester and we got a Million for our combined heat power. John stated that the County digester is completely paid for and ours will be too and that means the cost of operating will come down even more. The County has broken ground and will be running by
spring. Difference between manure and sludge is sludge is already producing methane. Mike Luksa asked if there is enough sludge available and Mike Long said part of the study was to see how much sludge we have. John said you have to read through the study from beginning to end to understand the process. Kamayr can fast track this if we want him to, he has been working on this.
Mike Luksa asked about the geothermal at the Police Station and Fire Station. Mike Long said he had a meeting with Dave Laney, Councilor Graney and the Mayor on October 24, 2006. They have all the approvals from their managers and department heads and he anticipates that on Tuesday he will have the signed agreements. When the bids came out they were hefty and so we went back and looked at some things and scaled it back in terms of dollars and cents. Right now the numbers look like $3.7 million dollars for the overall project, which includes the geothermal for the Police and Fire Stations, energy conservation for 10 or 12 building throughout the City, the Wastewater Treatment Plant pumps, the Water Filtration pumps and other things. They packaged it all into one project, so the way it is set up now
it is going to save us about $220,000 a year and the net cost to the City when you take out the energy savings, the net cost to us is about $1,200 a month, about $22,000 a year debt service for 20 years to pay for this $3.7 million dollar project. The New York Power Authority goes out and does requests for proposal for design build companies to come and do things and they hire engineers to do the feasibility study, they come back and give you the numbers, then you give them the go ahead to go to a more detailed level of study and they give you more numbers and you give them the go ahead and they do to the design build phase and right now we are at the design build phase and as soon as we get the numbers, we will give them to Lisa to break them down by the various codes for the enterprise fund, we will then bring that to Council to make a commitment to pay for the capitol part of this. Mike Luksa asked about the gas wells and John and Mike explained what the status
was at this time.
Tim asked Nancy if she found out anything on the Meridian pipeline crossing. Nancy said she has been working with them for over a year and has been dealing with Steve McCracken, Vice President of Sales and she learned that they are not transmitting through the pipeline any more. Apparently there is not a problem with supplying to the City however they have to reconnect the pipe at a significant cost. They sent their people out there to do field work to evaluate the situation about a month ago. What they are proposing is to re-establish a service supply contract probably at the dominion transmission price, which is pretty close to wellhead. We are in the process, their legals are evaluating what their obligations are, and she told them we would like to expand quantities. There are
engineering issues that need to be resolved and that is why they went out into the field and are waiting for the report.
Mike Luksa asked about the State Dam and the Chairperson brought the agency up to date on it. Mike Long stated that when we got under contract with NYPA to actually do the energy conservation, they were going to include the Mill Street project as a separate thing, but they had to get them under contract before they could get started. Had some people come up and look at it unfortunately it has taken a while to get this point because we packaged it up as a complete project. When Dr. Greeley was here, we did submit the grant application to NYSERDA for the State Dam Project that seemed to be the most logical at that point.
John passed out information on Building a Windpark from Noble Environmental Power, Glen Samson is willing to come and speak with the group. New York State has a better wind resource than California. When it comes time we will have a lot of information, we don’t want to miss out on this opportunity.
Mike Long stated that there are two vacancies on the agency and had a list of people that submitted letters before when members were first appointed. These vacancies were brought this up at the Council meeting and it was in the paper a couple times. Mike invited Luke Rybarczyk who is interested in serving on the agency, to the meeting to see the workings of the group and also gave him a copy of the by-laws and enabling legislation. In the list of interested people was Krste Biljanoski who worked in hydropower in Macedonia, he has an interest, has a bachelor’s degree in engineering and he would be a big asset. He has come to many meetings. Mike Luksa made a motion to recommend these two for appointment and seconded by Tim Lattimore. All in favor.
Tim made a motion to adjourn and seconded by Bill Graney. Next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 15, 2006 at 4:00 p.m. in the third floor training room. Also scheduled December meeting for December 20, 2006 at 4:00 p.m. Meeting adjourned at 5:35 p.m.
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