By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- The trouble-plagued hydropower plants on the Raquette River have depleted the village’s reserve funds and generated a $300,000 deficit.

“That puts the village in a very bad situation for the short term, but in the long term I still believe it will pay,” said Mayor Steven Yurgartis.

However, the payback may take 15 years.

The generators in the recently completed plant on the west bank of the river -- plagued by a fabricator who never delivered paid-for parts, delays due to faulty parts, and cost overruns -- are finally working fine, producing electricity, Yurgartis said.

The old east plant, resurrected in the 1980s after decades of sitting idle, is now the troubled one, with neither turbine spinning. Complications with the overhaul of gearboxes have cut expected revenues and are draining the village’s hydro fund.

“Our cost is about $1.6 million in over-budget expenses just in the last three years. It has completely depleted our reserves,” Yurgartis said.

On top of that, the hydro fund is now running a deficit of about $300,000, according to the mayor, with “overruns on the cost of the west dam project, and now including the growing repair cost for the east dam as well.

“At the east dam, both gearboxes failed within a couple of months of each other,” Yurgartis said. The plan was to get them sent off to be overhauled, one at a time, a relatively routine maintenance operation.

Gearbox #1 was reinstalled in June, taking time to reassemble it. “It ran fine for a week, and sounded great.”

Then on July 6, “there was a terrible noise and we had to shut it down. We found metal fragments in the oil.” A crew has been analyzing the problem and planning the next steps.

The overhauler “has acknowledged it’s their responsibility, and we’re negotiating compensation,” the mayor said.

The first unit’s gearbox still needs to be fixed, and the gearbox for Unit 2 is waiting to be sent to the overhauler, “still siting there, not running,” he said.

“We’re about $40,000 into repairs there so far, and it has not been successful,” Yurgartis said.

“I don’t know if there’s a curse on our hydro or what. I’ve wrestled for three years with this. It’s been a major frustration.”

But the mayor’s dedication to getting the projects humming is firm.

“I’ve been working on a computer program model that can be used as a framework for operating the plants,” said Yurgartis, an engineer by training.

Yurgartis took a sabbatical this spring from his teaching job at Clarkson University to “work at trying to understand our hydro operations, but east dam operations are suspended, so we didn’t get all the data needed” to develop software intended to optimize the plants’ performance.

Before the east dam gearboxes failed, the task of getting the new west dam turbines running right was a long process involving deficient parts that had to be remanufactured and delivered from Italy and the taxing work of getting controls adjusted to exacting specifications.

All that was after having to write off the millions the village had paid to Richard Kuiper, owner of Canadian Turbines, Inc., who failed to deliver parts that the village paid for in advance. The village had to find another manufacturer and start again.

The village won a suit against Canadian Turbines, and the court awarded the village a judgment for $6 million. But the company is out of business, has no assets, and nothing has been recovered in the suit.

“The good news is at the west dam. The units have both been running well without a problem for several months,” Yurgartis said.

“When we get at least one east dam unit operating, three out of the four turbines, I believe we will cover expenses for this year.”

But there is the current deficit, and “we still have $3 million in debt for the west dam,” from loans for equipment and construction.

But Yurgartis believes that with a net-metering agreement with Clarkson University that will provide the village with substantial power credits from west dam generation, and the east dam power expected back online before very long, “I still believe it will pay.”

“We’re looking forward to getting things stabilized and the bills paid and the loans under control, and getting to where we’re making energy money to pay all our bills,” he said.

“If you define profitability as recovering all of our investment, that’s probably 10 or 15 years out.”