A Controversy Is Brewing in Berlin Over What's Left of the Paper Mill

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• Citizens for a New Vision

Sandra Briggs lives just a few blocks from where the Fraser Paper Mill used to stand.

She says since North American Dismantling took apart most of the huge complex, Berlin has changed.

You know the site looks really great now. You know we’re getting some fantastic views since the company has cleaned up the site which is really nice. And the air smells better which is really great. You know we’re really enjoying all that for the first time in a really long time.

Briggs is one of many residents who oppose Laidlaw Energy’s plan to turn the last remaining boiler into a 65 megawatt biomass power plant.

Steve Griffin also opposes the plan, and he’s part of a group of 12 residents who have banded together against the Laidlaw proposal.

The group calls itself “Citizens for a New Vision”.

Griffin says his group wants to see a different future for the Fraser mill site.

Well we had a developer come up when the mill first closed. And he envisioned a mixed use, really, of commercial, retail and residential. But as soon as laidlaw says they were interested in the property he said he wasn’t interested in doing anything because if there’s a biomass plant on the property he said nothing will follow.

Laidlaw officials say their 65 million dollar project will directly benefit the city and region.

They say the plant would employ about 40 workers.

And they claim hundreds more would have work supplying the plant with the nearly 800 thousand tons of wood it would need each year.

They also say their plant would generate green power as required under the state’s new renewable portfolio law.

Micheal Bartoszek heads Laidlaw Energy and says his company’s proposal takes advantage of the circumstances that exist at the former paper mill site.

First of all this has been a heavy industrial site for over one hundred years. Its polluted with mercury, all sorts of horrible stuff, it’s essentially a brownfield site. Its not developable into anything other really than a heavy industrial site.

City officials don’t deny that the Laidlaw project would provide jobs.

They say it would also add property tax revenue to the city’s treasury.

But the city’s economic development director says there are parts of the downtown site that are free of hazardous pollutants.

And Norman Charest says there is another biomass project in the pipeline that would also help the city’s economy.

He says Clean Power Generation of Concord has just formally signed up to construct a 41 megawatt plant near Berlin’s wastewater treatment plant.

From my perspective they’re further along than laidlaw in that they’re in the que, which is the process that you have to go through for permitting and connecting to the grid. Laidlaw has not applied for those permits yet.

City officials say getting in the queue is important, because there’s limited capacity to transmit electricity to the regional grid.

Opponents of the Laidlaw plan say they hope the company’s delay in getting in the queue will discourage the effort to convert the former Fraser plant.

They say they think most residents agree with their position on the more than 100 acre site.

For support, they point to the results of the last city election.

That’s when the incumbent mayor who supported the Laidlaw plan lost the race by a wide margin.