By Kevin Werner, News Staff

Any plans that California-based Liberty Energy had to establish an alternative energy facility in Hamilton are now on some forgotten shelf collecting dust.

After spending eight years and about $12 million to get city and provincial approval to use biomass materials to produce an alternative energy source for the city, Chief Executive Officer Wilson Nolan is in California now assisting Liberty Energy in operating a renewable bio-energy production facility in Lost Hills, 42 miles west-northwest of Bakersfield. Liberty Energy is owned by McCarthy Farms of Bakersfield.

I spent a lot of time inHamilton, said Nolan, during a recent telephone interview from California. I sure did put in a lot of time there. Its still a good place. I like the community, and there are a lot of wonderful people there.

Liberty Energy recalled Nolan from his Hamilton posting soon after council decided in February to eliminate the companys proposed Strathearne Avenue North gasification site from the citys public private partnership funding request to the federal government.

That decision ended Liberty Energys idea to build what was called a biosolids incineration plant in the industrial heartland of the city after enduring nearly eight years of jumping through environmental and bureaucratic hoops.

I thought Hamilton would be an excellent place (for an energy-from-waste plant), he said.

In 2009 Nolan presented to council an unsolicited proposal for a $110-million plant on Strathearne Avenue North. Since 2004, Nolan had become as ubiquitous a personality within the Hamilton community as one of its politicians, as he attempted to sell the community, and city hall, on the prospect of converting sewage sludge and other biomass products, such as grass clippings, and wood shavings into electricity through a low emission gasification process. The company hired former Progressive Conservative MPP Trevor Pettit to represent the company, conduct a community outreach program, and help it through the various governments bureaucratic briar patches.

The proposal would eventually, according to Liberty Energy, create about 10 mega-watts of energy to power 8,000 homes. The residue 70,000-tonnes of ash would also be used in other material such as mixing with cement. Liberty Energy officials stated.

But the great benefit, Liberty Energy officials argued, would be the elimination of the many trucks that transport the citys sludge across the area to dump the material onto farm land.

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Liberty Energy leaves Hamilton with regret