Price tag on proposed tank farm is expected next week
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
In about a week, the Airport Commission will receive a preliminary report on how much it will cost to build a bulk fuel storage compound on Bunker Road.

Once the numbers are in, the Airport Commission and Bulk Fuel committee will start looking at how it can build the storage tanks in what will likely be some sort of phased development, Bulk Fuel Committee member and airport operations manager Al Peterson said Monday.

The Bulk Fuel Committee was formed at the April 12 Airport Commission meeting, along with the unanimous agreement to hire Leo Roy of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. of Watertown, Mass. as a consultant. The charge was to figure out which island entities would run a facility that would contain most all grades of gasoline, some diesel, aviation fuel, jet fuel, home heating oil, low sulfur and ultra low sulfur diesel and propane.

With the new facility in place, most, or all, of the island's fuel could be delivered by tanker between April and November with three-to-four deliveries a year, according to Roy. Some of the lesser-used fuels like diesel and liquid natural gas could still be trucked to the island as needed.

The plan is to store most of the island's fuels at a four-million-gallon tank farm off Bunker Road. The farm would be connected to a fuel pipeline running off the South Shore to a singlepoint mooring; there, a tanker would dock and pump fuel into a suboceanic pipeline that would run inland beneath the beach and sandplain grasslands on airport property. The project is estimated to cost $50 million.

Peterson indicated that phasing the entire project in stages would give the Bulk Fuel Committee and the Airport Commission time to work on all aspects of the project.

"The Finance Committee has been involved in the meetings and we're making progress in looking at ways to achieve what we want to do," he said. "We may phase it so we get some of the tank farm built during the time that we do the engineering and permitting on the pipeline."

As for the management of a new fuel storage property, Peterson said that no decision has been made, although the committee is talking with Harbor Fuel, the island's largest fuel importer and distributor, about what sort of management scenario might work best. The committee expects to learn more from its consultant about management possibilities and the construction of the storage facility at a meeting scheduled for Aug. 21.

"I think the key, what is driving it more than anything, is the potential hazard of the tanks downtown and ultimately, they have to go outside of town," said Peterson. "I think everybody is in agreement on that."

What Peterson said the committee is uncertain about is the need for certain fuels in the future, given the rising costs of these fuels and the planetary impacts of burning them.

"The real unknown is if we build this thing, in 10 years are we going to have the same demand for fuel?" said Peterson. "We could be an all-electric island. Home heating oil and jet fuel will always be here, but there are some

alternatives that we have to consider." I