BANGOR – Maine’s commissioner of health and human services this week approved a request by Eastern Maine Medical Center to build a heat and electricity generating plant on its State Street campus. The 4.6-megawatt facility is expected to supply essentially all of the hospital’s electricity, heating and cooling needs while reducing its dependence on the commercial electricity supplier in the region, Bangor Hydro-Electric Co.

EMMC first filed its application with the certificate of need office at DHHS in June 2004. The CON office is charged with reviewing big-ticket proposals for new equipment or facilities to minimize duplication of services or other negative impacts on the health care system in a given area.

In its request, the hospital projected the new natural gas-fired cogeneration plant would save $1 million or more each year in utility bills, enabling it to hold down costs to patients. The hospital also argued that the off-the-grid plant would safeguard the regional health care facility against loss of power in the event of storms, terrorist acts or other disasters.

EMMC estimates it pays Bangor Hydro $3 million a year.

Bangor Hydro contested the proposal at a public hearing in September on the grounds that it would drive up the cost of electricity to other consumers in the region by $800,000 a year. The company also challenged EMMC’s projected savings and costs associated with the plant and argued that the existing power supply and delivery system are reliable and adequate.

Staff at the CON office have been analyzing the request since the September hearing. Now that the plan has the approval of DHHS Commissioner Jack Nicholas, hospital officials say they hope to break ground on the $7.5 million project at the end of March and to have it fully operational within 18 months after that. The city of Bangor already has given its approval, and an air emissions permit from the state’s Department of Environmental Protection is pending.

Nicholas has required the hospital to monitor the cost of the electricity it produces for three years and to compare that cost to what it would have spent purchasing electricity from Bangor Hydro-Electric. If the hospital’s cost is greater, the difference between the two figures will be disallowed as an operating expense when EMMC is calculating what it should get paid by insurers and other health care payers.

According to Jeff Mylan, administrative director of facilities at EMMC, the gas-powered turbine will be housed in a new building at the east end of the hospital campus, between the Riverside Inn and the dilapidated structures of the Bangor Waterworks. Approximately 130 feet long, 35 feet wide and 20 feet high, the concrete and steel generating plant will be situated low along the riverbank, Mylan said Friday. There will be one emissions stack about 95 feet tall, and the turbine will be able to be powered by fuel oil as well as by natural gas.

“What you’ll see from State Street will be minimal,” Mylan promised, adding that the “sound-attenuated” design of the building will muffle the noise of the turbine effectively. Because the plant is designed to capture the heat produced in the generating process, there will be no billowing clouds of steam such as those produced just upriver at the Maine Independence Station in Veazie.

The design of the new plant is by Vanderweil Engineering in Boston and it will be built by the Cianbro Co. of Pittsfield. Cianbro president Peter Vigue serves on the board of EMMC’s corporate parent, Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems.

The new cogeneration facility will be built out of the hospital’s existing revenues combined with a $3 million grant from the federal Department of Energy. Mylan said savings in the first year are expected to range between $900,000 and $1.4 million and that the plant will pay for itself in about three years.

Bangor Hydro’s attorney could not be reached Friday afternoon for comment.