As it became clear this week that Evergreen Solar will be hard-pressed to solve all three major noise problems by its June 25 deadline, Devens Enterprise Commission (DEC) officials questioned both DEC’s and the company’s commitment to quickly providing relief for long-suffering residents of Old Mill Road.
Evergreen Solar’s plant manager, however, reported that both temporary and possibly permanent measures are being attempted to reduce or eliminate the major sources of noise. He did confirm that at least one problem is not likely to be solved by the deadline.
Commissioner John Knowles questioned the will of DEC to hold the company’s feet to the fire at an open meeting with Evergreen Solar representatives on June 4. He called DEC’s attitude “wishy-washy” in conveying the consequences of the continuing series of problems. If Evergreen Solar is to take DEC seriously, he said, the company needs to know how much it’s going to cost them. He pointed out that the second notice of violation referred to “possible fines,” rather than taking a hard line.
Evergreen Solar can be fined $300 per infraction per day if it does not solve the problems by June 25. Its original deadline was June 1. DEC also has the power to not renew the company’s temporary certificate of occupancy, itself less desirable than the permanent certificate that gives Evergreen Solar a home.
At the meeting, another commissioner pointed out that he did not think the company is taking the situation seriously because it is not bringing company experts in Oregon and China back to Devens to deal firsthand with the problems.
Evergreen Solar Vice President Rodolfo Archbold sought to repeatedly reassure the commission that the company is taking the situation seriously, and asked for its forbearance because Evergreen Solar needs time to define the problems, seek remedies, and then hire remediation specialists.
DEC told Evergreen Solar to deliver on June 11 a plan with detailed steps and a timeline that can be monitored by the commission for compliance.
Plant Manager Craig Core updated DEC Land Use Administrator/Director Peter Lowitt on June 8 about the results of the preliminary sound report issued by consultant Doug Sheadel on June 1 based on noise measurements taken between May 18 and 26. Core said the “pure tone” has been eliminated, but three major noise sources remain—gas deliveries, which is the worst offender, plus sound from volatile organic-compound scrubber units and cooling towers.
According to Core, the company is taking temporary measures to immediately remedy the gas-truck-pumping noise, and will spend $180,000 on the permanent solution by installing ground-mounted pumps to replace the truck-mounted hydraulic pumps. Core told DEC that this solution normally would take eight to 10 weeks to implement, however “work is underway to expedite and pull in this date.” In the interim, Evergreen Solar is seeking to design and install an acoustical “walled structure” to house the delivery truck during the pumping.
To solve the scrubber unit problem, the company has contracted with a designer-builder to enclose the unit’s three fans. The first structure will be complete June 12, and Sheadel will then test its effectiveness before the company can fine-tune it before building two more enclosures. In addition, engineers are considering both silencers and containment vessels as solutions.
Following the suggestions of Sheadel, custom-designed intake baffles and fan stack extensions are being ordered for the cooling towers’ thermal oxidizer blowers. “Evergreen Solar is now operating the cooling towers to minimize/stop operation of the unit which faces the property line and does not have the intake baffle … This was believed to provide some noise reduction for the affected neighbors,” Core said in his June 8 report.
In Sheadel’s report on all of the problems, the consultant stated, “This analysis demonstrates that it is feasible to operate the proposed equipment on the selected site within the noise performance goals. The final equipment design may incorporate different noise mitigation treatments than described here, but will be engineered to meet the same noise performance levels.” The report is part of a longer-range study designed to determine a basis for further remediation and whether additional monitoring is necessary to ascertain the success of noise attenuation methods being used.
Sheadel notes that success is possible, but the treatments that work may not be those that are now being envisioned. And then there’s the matter of handling less problematic noises once the major issues are wrestled into submission.
The entire June 1 interim report is available on www.devensec.com’s “News and Events” section.
