By DORIS COOK - Staff Writer
ASHTABULA — The State Controlling Board gave its approval Tuesday for a $3 million Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund grant for the Ashtabula County Port Authority’s cleanup project of the former FirstEnergy Plant C site on Lake Road.
“It’s good news for us. We had been assured we’d get the grant, but the controlling board was the last hurdle. The next step is for us to sign the contract with the state. We could begin to spend the money, but any work will probably wait until early 2008,” said John Palo, ACPA president Thursday.
The CORF funds will be used to clear asbestos from inside the multi-storied former FirstEnergy electric power plant. Palo said the port authority board has the engineering and bidding work in place already.
Palo said the engineering consultant, Stephen Collar of Michael Baker Jr. Inc., will meet with the ACPA board at its Oct. 5 meeting to go over project bids. In addition the consultants will prepare a timeline chart for the clean up project.
Exterior clean up work also will be done on the 21-acre State Road site. Meanwhile, Palo said the board will continue looking at two proposals recently received from Duke Energy and Johnson Controls. Both companies are interested in possibly reviving the old plant as an electric power source for the county.
“Our board needs to look at whether we want to lease or sell the buildings if the two companies decide do a feasibility study of starting up the power generators,” Palo said. “There are four generators still in the plant. One may only be necessary if it is used again for generating electricity, but it is an incentive,” he said.
The Plant C site and buildings were purchased for $1.1 million from FirstEnergy by the ACPA in November 2005 for its major water pumping operation. The water supplies seven nearby industrial plants on Lake Road in Ashtabula Township.
