BETHEL — Selectmen will field an unusual request at Monday night’s meeting: A pitch to tap into the natural gas pipeline running through town.
Christopher Garner of Bethel will propose that the board form an ad hoc committee to look into the feasibility of a regional effort to develop natural gas.
Specifically, he’d like Bethel and other Western Maine towns to tap into Portland Natural Gas Transmission System’s 47.5-mile-long “Rumford Lateral.”
That is a high-capacity, high-pressure interstate natural gas pipeline which began serving New England in 1999, according to the PNGTS Web site.
It was built to connect Rumford and Jay papermills to the system’s 24-inch-diameter trunk line, which travels for 272 miles from the New Hampshire-Quebec border to Haverhill, Mass.
The problem, Town Manager Jim Doar said on Friday, is that it’s a high-pressure line, which can’t be tapped into to heat a home, for example.
In a June 16 story in The Bethel Citizen, Garner said what’s needed to make the plan work is an adequate cogeneration plant, which he estimated costs $750,000 to $1 million.
In light of volatile oil prices, fossil fuel emission levels, abundant natural gas reserves across the lower 48 states, and Maine’s dependence on oil, Garner believes the time is prime for his Bethel Area Natural Gas Cooperative Initiative.
“Natural gas is domestically abundant and significantly cheaper than oil and gas,” he stated in the initiative document.
Already, he’s got SAD 44, The Bethel Inn, Gould Academy and Mount Abram Family Ski Resort willing to come to the table and he’s looking for more towns, businesses, educational institutions and the Chamber of Commerce.
“I believe that this can be done in a way to bring the work to local contractors and done in a fashion that will include local oil and propane providers in the conversion, maintenance and investment strategy,” Garner told the Citizen.
“This really is a way for the area to empower itself from within and protect itself from unwanted outside economic influence.”
The Citizen’s story said Garner has pitched the proposal to Newry officials, who were noncommittal. Monday marks the idea’s debut for Bethel selectmen.
“It’s an interesting proposal,” Doar said.
The July 11 Bethel selectmen meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the town office.
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