Charcoal
is being manufactured at the foot of Mt. Shatterack in Russell at the
Richmond Iron Company, as seen from across the Westfield River, just
behind the old railroad station. This is the site of the proposed
Russell Biomass power plant.
View of Russell Biomass power plant site from Main Street Bridge over Westfield River. HISTORY
The location on which Russell Biomass will be built has a long history as an industrial site. It was an active mill site beginning in 1888 when the Blandford Brick and Tile Company set up shop producing clay bricks until the closure of the Westfield River Paper Company in 1994. The site is currently classified as a brownfield and, as such, is unfit for non-industrial uses.
Paper was first produced on the site in 1908, after Blandford Brick ended production and sold the property to the Russell Falls Paper Company, one of a number of paper producers then operating mills along the Westfield River.
In 1916, the Russell Falls Paper Company was bought out by the Westfield River Paper Company, which produced glassine paper in the mill. The Westfield River Paper Company operated at the site until 1994. The mill's closure resulted in a loss of over 100 jobs.
In 2000, the site was purchased by Westfield Paper Lands, LLC, a company owned by Russell Biomass LLC founding partner William Hull. Westfield Paper Lands undertook a cleanup of the long-unused site by removing damaged portions of the mill building, cleaning up soil contaminated through decades of exposure to chemicals used in the paper-making process, decommissioning and properly disposing of two trailerloads of electrical transformers and erecting a new office building.
In 2004, in response to a call from the state and federal governments for development of new power plants nationwide and a growing movement toward development of renewable energy sources, Bill Hull proposed the idea of building a wood-fueled power plant on the former mill site. As a forester, Bill was aware of the need to establish a market for trees removed as part of healthy forest management practices. And as a Russell businessman, he was aware of an ongoing need to replace jobs lost with the pullout of paper producers, including the Westfield River Paper Company, in the mid-1990s.
In 2005 Russell Biomass LLC was formed as a partnership to build the 50 MW Russell Biomass plant. The planning and permitting process was initiated at the local and state level in 2005. The plant is expected to begin construction in the second half of 2008 and to commence operations in late 2010.