County, RMH OK Deal
March 10, 2009 HARRISONBURG - About two years from now, as soon as the new Rockingham Memorial Hospital is up and running, the county will begin earning cash from its buried trash. The Rockingham County Board of Supervisors recently approved a 10-year contract with the hospital to supply landfill-produced methane gas to the new RMH complex. Supervisors voted unanimously to sell the gas at a reduced market rate to the hospital, which is still under construction at the corner of Port Republic Road and Reservoir Street. It will cost about $2 million to build the 10-inch-wide pipe and the necessary equipment to clean up, dry out and compress the gas, said Warren Heidt, public works director for the county. According to the contract, the county will recover all the cost by the end of the decade-long contract. Construction on the pipe is expected to begin this fall and will take about eight months to complete, Heidt said. How It Works Methane gas is produced from decaying trash and collected at 26 gas wells at the landfill's site on Greendale Road, Heidt said. The 227-acre landfill, which accepts about 130,000 tons of trash from Harrisonburg and Rockingham County each year, is required by law to collect the gas to prevent it from migrating underground to neighboring properties. The county could release it into the atmosphere, but, because many scientists consider the greenhouse gas as a contributing factor to global warming, the landfill burns it, Heidt said. With the price of natural gas having increased over the last few years, the pipe project is worth the money, officials said. According to market prices, Rockingham County could get about $200 an hour for the gas, Heidt told the Daily News-Record earlier this year. Once at the RMH complex, the gas will run the boilers, which are used to sterilize the surgical equipment, cook food and heat hot water, said Dennis Coffman, RMH director of facilities planning and development. "This is one of those rare cases, where everybody wins," Coffman said. "It's good for the county, it's cheaper for us and it's good for the environment." Hospital officials also recently signed a "peak-load shedding" agreement with the Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative, Coffman said. That means RMH will beef up its emergency generators and use them - rather than energy from SVEC - to power the complex during peak-usage times. In exchange for occasionally going off the grid and making its own power, SVEC will sell RMH it's electricity during non-peak times at a reduced rate. The lower rate will more than pay for the larger generators, Coffman said. Coffman estimates that the new RMH facility will pay about $2 million a year for all of its utility costs, including water and electric. All About RMH RMH Quick Facts: n Construction began: August 2006 n Estimated completion: June 2010 n Total project cost, (including moving, etc): about $300 million n Original RMH built in 1912 n Oldest section still in use constructed in the 1950s n Last renovation: 1998 n Old RMH: 500,000 square feet n New RMH: 608,000 square feet The New Building Has: n More than 11,000 light fixtures n 585,000 bricks n 1,730 sinks and toilets n 1.4 million pounds of ductwork n 780 miles of copper wire n 50 miles of plumbing pipes n 150,000 linear feet of walls *Source: Dennis Coffman, RMH director of facilities planning and development Contact Heather Bowser at 574-6218 or hbowser@dnronline.com
by Heather Bower, Daily News Record