City councilors made it official Tuesday night; Haverhill will buy electricity from a Ward Hill organics-to-energy operation.
The city will buy electricity, beginning at 13 cents per kilowatt hour and increasing 1 percent annually, from an anaerobic digester operation at Crescent Farm, 1058 Boston Road.
As WHAV reported earlier, farm owner C. Michael “Mike” Davidowicz plans to use the anaerobic digester to capture naturally occurring methane gas and use it to fuel a generator producing a megawatt of electricity. Byproducts of the process will be used as natural fertilizer. According to council documents, it is estimated to produce as much as 6.8 million net metered kilowatt hours of electricity per year.
The 350-acre farm has been operated by four generations of the Davidowicz family. Besides Crescent Farms, the anaerobic digester will accept wastes from about 10 other mostly small farms, including Shaw Farm in Dracut. Food wastes from area restaurants and, possibly, the Haverhill Public Schools, will likely be accepted.
So much for checks and balances on this project.
Complaints etc won’t matter now that the city is getting money..
As a supporter of the project who had reservations I now see how problems may come about.
Manure/city hall, pretty ironic…