ROCKLAND, Maine — The planning board will need an extension on a deadline imposed by city council to come up with a proposed ordinance to regulate power plants, the chairman of the board conceded Tuesday.
However, a city councilor who supported a six-month moratorium on power plant applications being considered by the city said he is still confident the planners can get a proposed ordinance to the council in time for it to be adopted before the moratorium is set to expire in June.
The planning board met Tuesday night with two engineers hired by the city to advise it on the proposed ordinance. After the meeting, planning board Chairman Erik Laustsen said there was no way the planners could meet the Friday deadline set by the council when it approved the moratorium in January.
“Unfortunately, I never thought we could finish by March 4,” Laustsen said.
The planning board is scheduled to meet next on March 10, he said, and within a week or two of that meeting, a recommended ordinance could be forwarded to the council.
Councilor Larry Pritchett, who serves on the city’s energy advisory committee which also has been considering proposed regulations, acknowledged that the planning board would need an extension of its March 4 deadline.
Pritchett said it was possible the development and approval of an ordinance still could be completed without extending the moratorium, though he has been in consultation with the city attorney about the possibility.
“(The) council may consider a short extension at some point, but it is not yet clear that will be needed,” Pritchett said.
The council imposed the moratorium in January and made it retroactive to Dec. 14. The moratorium was adopted after a majority of councilors expressed concern that current city ordinances would not adequately regulate proposed power plants. The vote was prompted by a project being considered by Rockland Energy Center.
Rockland Energy Center LLC partner Evan Coleman said at that time that if the council approved the moratorium, the company would stop spending money on developing the project in Rockland. The company had announced two weeks earlier that it was going to come forward in February with a plan to build on private land a 35-megawatt natural-gas-fired plant to generate electricity and steam.
A telephone message left Wednesday morning with Coleman was not immediately returned.
The power plant project divided the city with opponents claiming it would pose environmental threats to the community from emissions, noise and excess consumption of water. Supporters, however, argued the city needs additional taxable projects to help support the cost of services in the community.
Pritchett said this week that the process of developing regulations has been going well and been very productive. He said the public forums held last year provided committee members a lot of insight into what questions need to be addressed. He said the current standards in city ordinances are inadequate and that it is not clear how a court would rule whether either an opponent or developer were to appeal a city decision on a project.
“The current standards are the worst of both worlds,” Pritchett said.
The city council set aside $20,000 to pay for engineering consultations to develop the ordinances. At Tuesday night’s meeting were engineers Mike Chonko from SMRT Inc. and Dan Kelley from Woodard and Curran.