WEST ENFIELD – Plans by a Dover-Foxcroft-based spruce mill to open a $17 million operation employing 70 people full time on U.S. Route 2 will be delayed a year, company officials said Tuesday.

This does not signal any decrease in Pleasant River Lumber Co.’s desire to build a mill at its proposed location, co-owner Jason Brochu said, merely that company officials need more time to decide what is best to put on the 250-acre site.

“We were anticipating making those decisions on a shorter time frame. Our time frame was overly aggressive,” Brochu said Tuesday. “We have come a long ways. The site selection is a big part of the process and that’s completed, as well as the permitting.

“The decisions now revolve around ensuring that we will build something viable for the long-term and that matches what’s there for raw material,” he added.

Enfield Town Manager Theresa Thurlow said she didn’t know about the yearlong delay. She had heard, however, that there might be a six-month delay. “Obviously I am disappointed. That’s 70 jobs that won’t be coming here this year,” she said.

When Gov. John Baldacci, the Brochu family and officials from the adjoining Ridgewood Renewable Power LLC property announced the building plans in July, they said the mill would help create as many as 350 new jobs and would be completed by fall 2006. Its impact should help create four to five more jobs in support industries and local businesses for every person employed, they said.

Now, company officials hope to start preliminary site work by the fall and break ground the following spring, with construction completed by fall 2007, Brochu said.

Pleasant River will make more than 100 million board feet of lumber annually while supplying wood chips to fire the boilers at the adjoining Ridgewood Renewable Power plant. The 22-megawatt plant burns about 30 tons of wood chips per hour round the clock.

By taking the mill’s chips and wood wastes, the plant will save the mill disposal costs while saving the electrical plant transportation costs on the wood chips it has trucked in.

To help them make the proper decisions, Pleasant River officials will be looking at mills around the country to familiarize themselves with various equipment and building designs that might fit their property, Brochu said.

They also will try to finish securing a deal that would allow them use of a railroad spur about 1.5 miles from their property and get state or federal grants to refit that area. The railroad line will help them ship product nationwide, Brochu said.

The 250-acre property has been designated a Pine Tree Zone, the company will receive a state tax break when it moves onto the land, and the state Department of Environmental Protection approved permits for the plant three or four months ago, Brochu and Thurlow said.