Streets, power are topics at City Council
Kenneth Purscell
The Newman Grove City Council began the process of updating the 1- and 6-year plans at their January 14 meeting. No action was taken because these were preliminary conversations. However, not many changes are on the horizon.
“We need to just maintain what we’ve got,” said member Tom Bagley. “We can only do what we can afford. We do have to do more armor coat if we can afford it.”
Maintenance, though, will be demanding since this winter has been so hard on streets. “We’ve had a lot of frost pushing up everywhere,” remarked Mayor David Johnson.
Council member Milan Sawyer did remark that maintenance plans need to be in place soon. “We have to get bids for construction right away or nobody will be available.”
The only significant change to the plan that was discussed was removing the project repairing the curve on the south side of First Street. The project was completed last year at a cost of $28,000.
In other business, utilities chief Jerry Sawyer reported that everything was holding up despite the heavy snow, with a couple of exceptions. “We did have some trouble with the loader, but we got that fixed,” he said. “There were also a few frozen water pipes, and we may see some more when things thaw.”
He also reported that repairs on the south well have been delayed due to the “terribly cold” weather.
Scott Sokol and Dave Bell spoke to the council on behalf of Loup Power District. “We appreciate being able to serve Newman Grove,” said Bell. “You are on the edge of our service area, but we are committed to giving you the best service.
“Part of that commitment is that we plan to keep the local office open,” Bell continued. “We are committed to this community.”
After the meeting, Bell took a few informal questions from the council about plans for wind generation in the area. “We expect that all the commitments will be in place soon to develop the wind farm planned west of here towards Petersburg,” he said.
Plans for the wind farm call for 54 towers. “Since one maintenance person is required for every six to eight towers, there would be a few permanent jobs from the project. We just don’t know how many right now.”
He said that each tower costs $400 plus shipping. An entire unit, including the generator, costs around $1.5 million and produces about two megawatts of power, just a little less than what it takes to power Newman Grove.
Of course, a wind farm only produces power when there is wind to farm. “We can’t store energy,” Bell said, “so there has to be other sources to back up.”
Since one of the federal targets is to have 20% of energy coming from renewable sources, including wind, this means that Nebraska has the capacity to stay in the game in a big way. Part of the motive for current development projects is to export more energy from Nebraska.