Still no suppliers or buyers for Wiregrass Power LLC –VLCIA

According to an open records request of 17 February 2011, the Industrial Authority says Wiregrass Power LLC still
“has not yet identified or completed a comprehensive list of potential suppliers of raw materials, goods and services required to construct and operate the biomass electric generating plant.”
This is on a sheet entitled “Owners/Investors/Suppliers/Contracts”, which also says:
“Site preparation and construction is not scheduled to begin until June 1, 2011.”
Hm, what happened to breaking ground in January 2011? The document also said a “Project Critical Path time-line is attached” but it wasn’t.

Regarding buyers for the plant’s power:

“Wiregrass Power, LLC is currently negotiating a Power Purchase Agreement with several Georgia Utilities. The negotiations are ongoing and confidential in nature until a final agreement is negotiated, approved and signed.”
These answers are even less forthcoming than back on 27 April 2010 at the air quality hearing or when I asked about sources for the wood and buyers for the power at the 6 Dec 2011 VLCIA “Forum”. But the basic answers remain the same: no they don’t have sources for the wood or buyers for the power.

The document also says

Wiregrass Power, LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sterling Planet, Inc. (www.sterlingplanet.com)…
As for other investors, VLCIA claims not to know, and refers us to the Economic Development Agreement, which it says was attached, but wasn’t. Fortunately, LAKE has made available a copy someone previously obtained through another open records request.

After some compliments about Sterling Planet, the current document refers us to www.sterlingplanet.com/staff for further information, and appends two sheets taken from Sterling’s web pages, which appear to be old versions of Sterling’s about us and renewable energy pages.

Here’s Chairman Sonny Murphy of Sterling Planet speaking at the groundbreaking of Wiregrass Solar LLC, which is another Sterling Planet subsidiary. Sterling’s solar subsidiary is quite popular hereabouts, yet many of the same people oppose Sterling’s biomass plant for a variety of reasons, many of which perhaps VLCIA should take more seriously.

-jsq