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New life for old landfills

A huge solar field is in the works in North Toledo. It will have the potential to generate electricity for thousands, create jobs and local products will be used.

The plan is to put the solar field on two capped landfills near the Jeep plants. The Dura Avenue landfill and the Tyler landfill. Even though a lot of the details have yet to be worked out this project could be generating electricity in less than two years.

Tim Murphy is a Commissioner with the City of Toledo's Department of Public Utilities Division of Environmental Services, "These are closed landfills that do not have any real value, so this is an opportunity to get beneficial re-use out of this property."

The combined sites are about 80 acres, bordered by I-75, LaGrange and Stickney. Murphy says the land will be developed by OCI Solar Power from Atlanta and Boston based CME Energy, "The project will start in 2012 and it will be complete in 2013 and be producing power from the site at that time."

This will be the second solar field project in the city. The first is at the Collins Park Water Treatment Plant it was developed by a different company. The North Toledo solar field will be considerably bigger. Jeff Ruggiero is the Director of Development for CME, generating electricity for up to seven thousand homes and businesses, "We're looking for 5-7 megawatts of energy generated a year and it will be a 15-20 million dollar project. We'll sell that electricity to individual users possibly through the City of Toledo or put it out on the grid and generate income that way."

Murphy says while the details are still being worked out there is great potential for the city, "We'd like to take power through the Toledo Public Power, a municipal power utility, and the city could buy and sell the power from this facility down the road. It will be another exciting part of the project."

There's no cost to the city. Murphy says Toledo will actually bring in about twenty thousand a year in rent, "We're going to come in and lease the land from the city, so it will be an income stream for Toledo , we are not asking for any kind of government compensation."

Ruggiero adds that the focus will be local, "We have every intention of hiring as many local contractors and using as many locally built products as we can."

The plan still needs approval from city council before it can move forward. Council is set to vote next Tuesday and they are expected to approve the deal. After that the mayor and the developers will have to sign off on the plan. Once that happens survey and engineering work will get underway at the site.

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