Energy Commission 5/22

The bulk of the meeting tonight was about the fuel cell proposal. And it's late, so I'm not going to get into the details. Nonetheless, I was very happy that both David Schrumm and Diane Visconti attended tonight's meeting. So they had a chance to hear a more fluid conversation than we'll probably hear tomorrow night. (Btw, I think that's simply a matter of there being fewer and more knowledgable people in attendance at Energy meetings, so discussions flow easier and are more in-depth.) I don't know if either decided tonight if they will support the proposal, but I hope they do support it. As I indicated in my letter to the Herald this week, I just don't feel the people in town want to spend anymore money on the pool. And this proposal is a perfect way to reduce spending. (Here's the front page story from the Friday edition of the Waterbury paper, by Lauresha Xhihani)

There were plenty of other items on the agenda, such as the energy consumption benchmarking tool... which leads into the town (hopefully) becoming an Energy Star town... and a discussion began on the use of our "renewable" energy (methane) at the wastewater treatment facility. But the last little bit of (what I think is) good news is that I made contact with someone in Bethany today. And she was quite excited about getting involved in a Clean Energy Competition with Cheshire. She suggested that Bethany (her, really) could offer some free horseback riding time as a prize if Cheshire wins. And Cheshire already has a tentative prize. So hopefully... we're good to go now on a competition and can launch it soon.

Tim White
Town Council, Energy Commission liaison
TimWhite98@yahoo.com