Saugus Alternative Energy Committee seeks lower bills for schools

SAUGUS-School Business Manager Richard Weeks thinks Saugus might have one of the most cutting edge committees in the commonwealth with its Alternative Energy Committee.Weeks, along with Superintendent Richard Langlois, have been liaising with the committee, which among other things is looking at energy alternatives for the schools.”It’s been one year they’ve been active and they’ve been aggressively pursuing bringing alternative energy sources to Saugus,” he recently told the School Committee. “They’ve done a tremendous amount of work . . . in municipal government this is probably the most cutting edge committee out there.”When the special Town Meeting opened Monday, committee Chairman John Truesdale told members the committee’s goal was simple, lowering the town’s utility costs by establishing alternative energy, be it wind or solar or even methane gas. And it is a mission the committee of five takes seriously.According to Truesdale the town spends roughly $1.2 million per year on electrical costs.The problems the committee faced right off the bat were not simple though. Truesdale said its been said that the northeast is not consistently windy enough to support wind power, solar power is a not considered a strong fit and local dumps might not produce enough methane gas.Undeterred the committee is still investigating all three and, he assured meeting members, at no cost to the town.While funding, Truesdale said, is a major issue it namely takes legwork and is not completely out of the committee’s reach.”The bottom line is there is an awful lot of money if we can get a project up and running,” he said. “It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s maybe a year out or more.”The committee is also working on adopting site selection guidelines, which would be needed to pursue an ideal such as erecting wind turbines. They are also reviewing alternative energy bylaws from other communities because Truesdale said they learned cities and towns must address the issue within their bylaws.Truesdale said they are looking closely at Hull’s bylaws since the community already has two wind turbines in action.There have also been ongoing conversations with various state legislators and departments and organizations such as the Renewable Energy Research Laboratory.”I just regret that we got a late start on this,” Truesdale said adding that he would like to have been further along in the process by now. “And I regret not having enough time to put into this. I’d like to work on this full time to really get it going.”