YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Youngstown State University President Bill Johnson said the university isn’t a viable option to provide heating to downtown.
Johnson sent a statement Friday morning about the ongoing SOBE Thermal Energy System’s failure.
“YSU officials at the highest level, as well as our facilities and engineering teams, have been at the table to try and help determine potential solutions to this problem,” Johnson wrote. “However, while YSU recognizes the critical importance of reliable heating services to our downtown community, YSU simply cannot be considered a viable option to provide these services. This is not a decision YSU made quickly or lightly, but rather one dictated by significant technical, infrastructure, financial and operational realities.”
The steam plant’s heating service, which serves 27 downtown buildings and 90 residents, was disconnected Sept. 30 after SOBE failed to make payments on a boiler it leased from a Chicago-area company. A court had ordered in August that the company could repossess the unit. A Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on Sept. 26 appointed Reg Martin as receiver to manage the business affairs of SOBE Thermal. He said the utility is cash-strapped and brings in about $103,000 per month.
SOBE has since secured a mobile boiler unit to replace the one repossessed, and that boiler is now operational despite glitches that caused the system to crash earlier this month. A single boiler, however, isn’t sufficient to handle the high pressure over the winter, the receiver has said.
He reported at a meeting last week that the company was now working with YSU’s boiler system to tie into SOBE’s district lines downtown, which would require repairing steam lines along Rayen Avenue. The YSU system could then serve as a long-term backup to the boiler, Martin had said. Absent that, Martin noted he could acquire a second boiler at the site to provide redundancy.
Johnson’s statement said the university’s facilities personnel have determined the SOBE pipeline, unused for more than nine years, “is in such poor condition that it is impossible to safely back-feed steam from YSU’s system into SOBE’s distribution system.”
Even if the infrastructure issues could be overcome, YSU lacks the necessary infrastructure capacity on either the boiler intake side or the output side to divert steam to external facilities beyond what’s necessary to provide uninterrupted service to students, faculty, staff and campus facilities, the president wrote.
To provide steam to the city, even temporarily, would require the university to “make significant costly modifications into the millions of dollars to our boiler plant configuration,” Johnson’s statement reads. “YSU is simply not funded for that. In addition, aside from the technical, infrastructure, and financial challenges, YSU is not a public utility provider.”
It doesn’t have the regulatory authority, operational infrastructure, rate structures or staffing necessary to function as a public utility to serve an external entity like the city, the statement continued.
“Ultimately, YSU remains committed to being a good community partner and will continue to cooperate with city officials, state regulators and other stakeholders in their efforts to identify sustainable, long-term solutions to this challenge,” Johnson’s statement reads. “I want to assure YSU’s campus community that our heating systems remain fully operational and capable of meeting our campus needs throughout the winter season. Our facilities team continues to monitor our systems closely to ensure uninterrupted service to our students, faculty and staff.”
Last week, Mayor Jamael Tito Brown and state Rep. Lauren McNally, D-58th, drafted letters to Gov. Mike DeWine’s office requesting that the state provide emergency relief to support steam heat delivery service to downtown’s SOBE customers. The letters came the day after a meeting between Martin, the SOBE receiver, city officials and others that became contentious.
The letters cited concerns about inadequate heat and hot water to SOBE customers during the approaching winter. City Hall is among the downtown buildings served by the steam plant.
Pictured at top: SOBE Thermal Energy’s facility on North Avenue.