Negotiations for Escanaba power plant

ESCANABA — After the power plant shut down on Monday, the city of Escanaba is looking to move forward.

At this time the city of Escanaba is in serious negotiations with an outfit out of Indiana called Sterling Energy Group on the potential sale of the power plant. With the power plant closing, all of its employees were laid off. There is potential for those people to retain their jobs in the future.

“The Sterling Energy Group has committed to re–hiring those people should a deal come to pass and so we are working towards that,” said Escanaba City Manager Jim O’Toole, “our primary objective is and always has been to sell the plant for continued plant operations.”

Since the city has been purchasing power off of the grid for some time, Escanaba residents shouldn’t expect any impact.

“The people who receive power from the City of Escanaba saw no change and will see no change,” said Mayor of Escanaba Marc D. Tall, “we are always re–evaluating the rates and we have to compute all of our costs and then adjust our rates accordingly.”

There is expected to be more information available about the negotiations with Sterling Energy Group sometime next week.