GREENFIELD — Greenfield Middle School Auditorium will again be the setting for a public hearing about natural gas, this time on Berkshire Gas Co.’s long-range supply plan.
The Aug. 30 hearing, scheduled for 7 p.m. by the state Department of Public Utilities, will be to review the company’s four-year forecast for supplying customers.
For now, the company’s 241-page Long-Range Forecast and Supply Plan, filed less than a month ago, simply calls for identifying “any and all practical or feasible resource alternatives” to meet its requirements, after which it will consider their feasibility to determine “which resources are appropriate for more comprehensive analysis.”
The company says it wants to identify a plan to end the current moratorium on new customers and expansion in its “eastern area,” which now includes Greenfield, Montague, Deerfield, Sunderland and Whately as well as Amherst, Hadley and Hatfield.
The plan, the first since 2012, is needed to address the area’s growing demand for natural gas in the wake of cancellation of the proposed Northeast Energy Direct pipeline through the region.
A hearing in this area was specifically requested in a July 5 letter to the DPU from Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, along with Reps. Paul Mark, D-Peru, and Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington. The only other hearing scheduled by the DPU is to be in the department’s Boston headquarters on Aug. 23.
The filing discusses a range of options, from keeping in place the moratorium set in place in the winter of 2014 to increased conservation, storing more liquefied natural gas in Whately for peak winter demand, to using pipelines or other systems of natural gas distribution.
The state attorney general’s office has filed to intervene in the case, as is customary.
The middle school auditorium was nearly packed for a public hearing June 2015 on Berkshire Gas’ proposed long-term contract for Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co.’s NED project. The following month, it was the setting for a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission hearing on the project, which has since been canceled.
The Berkshire Gas analysis is intended “to identify and evaluate potential resource alternatives that would effectively address the requirements of existing customers while also permitting the termination of the moratorium,” according to the July 8 filing.
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You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com
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