Reading, Birdsboro and Berks County authorities gathered Tuesday, July 16, to mark the borough overcoming a major hurdle on the track to securing the development of an EmberClear power plant at the former Armorcast site.
An agreement between the Birdsboro Municipal Authority and the Reading Area Water Authority will allow the site to obtain the water needed for building and running the natural gas, combined-cycle power plant.
“This is a landmark in multi-municipal cooperation,” said Ted Morse, chairman of the Birdsboro Municipal Authority.
The Memorandum of Understanding that was signed Tuesday states that the two authorities will work together to supply the water needed to make the EmberClear project a reality. The deal comes a little more than four months after the agreement of sale for the vacant property was signed.
Still in the early planning stages, the amount of water needed for the energy plant was spoken about early on.
“Pulling water from Reading Area Water Authority was suggested almost immediately,” EmberClear Chief Operating Officer Nick Cohen said in a press release.
A lot of work is on the horizon, however, as Birdboro prepares to handle an influx of about 1.5 million gallons of water a day for the site. Improvements have to be made to several facets of the infrastructure. Water lines need to be expanded and the borough will need additional pumping capacity. However, that work needed to be done in the near future regardless of the plant, said Chip Bilger, executive director of the Western Berks Water Authority.
“This will be good for the Birdsboro economy. The work on the infrastructure brings jobs and it improves the constant water supply,” Bilger said. “This benefits the residents of Birdsboro in a big way.”
Morse said that EmberClear is also paying for “all necessary improvements required for this project,” which means the borough does not have to shell out the money for the work.
“Tell me how this is not a win-win,” Morse said.
The Reading Area Water Authority agrees. The additional water the authority will be providing will be a big financial boost. According to Ernest Schlegel, Chairman of RAWA, the agreement will represent a 12 percent increase over what is currently pumped.
Under the agreement, RAWA will extend the water line along Route 724 to the Birdsboro borough line. The borough will take over extending the water line from there to the former Armorcast site.
“This will result in increased revenue for us, for the borough for the school district and the county,” Schlegel said. “And it will create new jobs for county residents.”
Schegel recognized the work put in by members of the Birdsboro Borough Council, the Municipal Authority and his own team at RAWA to get this agreement in place. Going back further, Morse recognized borough council’s efforts to get EmberClear interested in the site even before it was clear how the borough would handle the water supply.
“We impressed them. We showed them that we are good people to work with and that we don’t push back on progress and development,” Morse said.
The EmberClear plant is a $550 million project that will generate electricity on the site of the former steel mill that was closed in 1988. The project is not entirely a done deal, but the ability to provide enough water was a major step in the process, Morse said.
Now EmberClear Corp., based in Lackawanna County, has to obtain federal approval to add power the plant will generate to the grid. According to Morse, that decision is expected sometime this fall. If everything goes accordingly, EmberClear is hoping the plant will be online sometime in 2017.
“There is a high degree of confidence from them,” Morse said. “They are continuing to spend money on it.”
