The board of directors for the Pease Development Authority, a New Hampshire quasi-government agency, announced is looking to halt a contract it has with Rensselaer Iron and Metal, a Renssalaer, N.Y., scrap company. Under the plan, implemented late last year, the scrap company would be able to load and offload scrap metal from vessels that visited the Portsmouth, N.H., deepwater port.
The PDA also adopted a new policy stating that bulk cargo arriving by vessel to be transported by truck or rail to other locations may not stay at the port for longer than 30 days. Cargo arriving by vehicles to be loaded and shipped via ocean-going vessel would have 75 days storage.
“We don’t want to see the port turned into a long-term storage facility,” said Arthur Nickless, a member of PDA’s board. “We want it to be a place where cargo is going in and out.”
According to press reports, the contract with Renssalear was terminated due to concerns over the type of scrap that was coming into the port facility.
Also at Thursday’s meeting, the board terminated its scrap metal contract because of concerns the board had about the type of scrap that was coming into the port facility.
Representatives from the company had promised that clean scrap would be coming through.
In March, City Manager John Bohenko brought to the board’s attention that different types of scrap was being processed.
In April, the PDA rejected a request from the company to add additional types of scrap to its inventory at the port terminal.
Bartlett said the PDA will likely lose a couple of hundred thousand dollars by terminating this contract. However, the board believed that getting rid of the contract was better in the long run for this facility.