Benefits to the Town of Russell BENEFITS / LOCAL
Taxes
We have guaranteed an average of $1.3 million per year over the life of the plant. That's $26 million for the first 20 years. This amounts to over $2,000 per household each year and will lift the town out of its current deficit situation. Selectmen have already committed $300,000 per year (over $500 per household per year) to lowering residential tax rates and can now use the additional revenues for infrastructure maintenance and improvements.
Lower Electric Bills
By offering the power we generate to local power companies at an attractive, fixed rate, Russell Biomass will give consumers in the region the opportunity to save roughly 2 cents per kilowatt hour in the long term. In an average American home, which uses 830 kWh per month, this would add up to a savings of nearly $200 per year.
Jobs
Construction of Russell Biomass, which will take two years, will create 50 full-time jobs in the local area.
Once the plant is up and running, it will need a permanent, full-time staff of 22. Hiring preference will be given to qualified Russell residents.
In addition to these direct employment benefits, over 200 additional jobs will be created in the fuel supply, transportation, and other economic sectors.
Scholarships/Internships
Russell Biomass will provide funding for an annual college scholarship in the fields of forestry and renewable energy to be awarded to a student from Russell or the surrounding communities.
Russell Biomass also will host a summer maintenance internship for a deserving high school student from Russell. Summer interns will have the opportunity to learn about renewable energy and plant operations.
Contribution To The Local Economy
Russell Biomass will create a new revenue source for local businesses providing supplies, delivering wood, and offering services and goods to plant employees. Russell Biomass employees will add to the local economy as consumers, homeowners and taxpayers.
Quality Of Life
Russell Biomass has the potential to improve the quality of life in and around Russell in a number of areas. It will make the Town of Russell more economically secure and better able to serve its residents. In addition, the Town has a special quality of life opportunity. If the Town officials and the residents at Town Meeting vote to do so, our project provides the opportunity for the Town to eliminate most truck traffic from Main Street in Russell by pursuing an alternate access route around Turtle Bend Mountain. Our project will also support the continued ability of land owners, such as Russell Biomass partner Bill Hull, to maintain open lands and help preserve the rural character of the town by allowing the removal of fallen trees and dead wood from the surrounding woodlands.
We have proposed to the Town for Town approval a plan under which Russell Biomass would pay, in advance, future taxes above $300,000 per year to finance construction of a bypass road around Turtle Bend Mountain that would allow trucks traveling to and from our plant and other businesses to avoid using Main Street. With the creation of this road, the town could not only eliminate wood fuel trucks from using Main Street, but actually ban all other non-essential truck traffic from entering Russell's downtown. This would not only make Main Street safer, but would create the opportunity for a classic New England town center to thrive.
Russell Biomass also would provide a much-needed source of revenue for the owners of forest land, helping to ensure that that land remains undeveloped and that the town is able to maintain its rural character. Some of the wood Russell Biomass will use as fuel will come from inferior trees that foresters like Bill Hull must remove from their land in order to stimulate healthy growth. In the past, some of that wood was sold to pulp mills, but that market has shrunk in recent years as the pulp mills have closed down, making removal of fallen and dying trees an ever-growing expense. With no reliable market for this wood, foresters have few choices: they can lose money (which they can't afford to do over the long term), leave inferior trees standing or where they fall, stunting healthy growth and making their land dangerous to hikers and hunters (to the point where they might have to close off property to public use to avoid liability), or consider selling off land to developers. Russell Biomass will provide land owners with a market for these trees now and for the foreseeable future, ensuring that forest land remains both wooded and open to public use.
Revitalization Of A Blighted Site
Russell Biomass also would bring new life to a long-unused, blighted industrial site, by building an environmentally progressive power plant that will be the safest and cleanest in the history of New England.