GTS gets long-awaited geothermal project underway

Left: A chart hanging inside the drilling pen at GTS recently explains how geothermal wells work. Right: (from feft to right) Geologist Richard Young; John Rhyner, assistant project manager of Langan Engineering and Environmental Services; Maureen Burnley, GTS’ executive vice president for finance and operations; and Dennis Frawley, the Seminary’s redevelopment project manager stand in front of the geothermal drilling rig set to dig the first well in GTS’s ambitions energy conversion project.

By Jefferson Siegel

As the city suffered through a brutal heat wave recently, one Chelsea institution was preparing to challenge global warming with the ultimate in energy recycling.

The General Theological Seminary began clearing the way for a geothermal project that, when completed in about two years, will have between 18 and 22 energy-efficient wells providing heating and cooling for the 190-year-old campus.

Drilling on the first well, which is being sunk near the southeast corner of 10th Ave. and 21st St., began last Wednesday, and engineers said each well, which can be as deep as 1,500 feet, will take about two weeks to complete.

“We couldn’t be happier,” said Maureen Burnley, the Seminary’s executive vice president for finance and operations, as she stood next to the drilling rig wearing an orange hardhat. “This is a visionary commitment. We’ve been here 200 years, and we expect to be here another 200 years.”

GTS will be drilling three wells on Ninth Avenue between 20th and 21st Streets, in front of the soon-to-open Desmond Tutu Education Center, and six to eight wells on each of 20th and 21st Streets between Ninth and 10th Avenues.

The project, which will cost $16 million, will pay for itself in 15 years, according to Burnley. “We’ll realize savings, measured in today’s dollars, of about $400,000 a year in heating and cooling.”

In the first 10 years of the new system’s operation, which was approved by Community Board 4 last summer, the Seminary will reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by more than 14,000 tons. The need for roof-level cooling towers and window air conditioners will be permanently eliminated.

Burnley addressed the question of neighborhood opposition by admitting, “It’s a new technology. There have been some concerns. We’ve gotten a bifurcated response. Community Board 4 supports it; the neighbors oppose it.”

Steven Shore, a neighbor who is president of the ad-hoc group Concerned Environmentalists of Chelsea Square, which has 30–40 members who own property around GTS, said the group supports the Seminary’s green project but has concerns that neither GTS nor its lawyer have agreed to discuss.

Among the group’s issues are safety, the effects of vibrations on their buildings, and hydrofracturing and other factors that may destabilize the ground beneath their properties.

As for the drilling pens that will take away parking spaces on 10th Avenue and 20th and 21st Streets, Shore said, “They’ll will be inconvenient, but that’s it.”

One enthusiastic supporter of the drilling project who expressed little concern was geologist Richard Young, of the firm Hatch Mott MacDonald. The city “could have one on every block,” he explained. “No more fuel truck deliveries; there’s just a manhole on the street.”

According to Burnley, the wells are being sunk in the sidewalks because the campus area is completely built-up. Five of those wells will serve the Tutu Center, slated to open next month.

Dennis Frawley, the Seminary’s redevelopment project manager, said that once the wells are completed, he’s looking forward to the old boilers being removed from GTS’s grounds.

Currently, there are about 20 geothermal wells either under construction or in operation in Manhattan. Geothermal heat pump systems make use of the constant temperature of the earth below the surface level. During the winter months, when the subsurface is warmer than the air above ground, the system transfers heat upward. During summer months, when the air is warmer than the subsurface, the heat is transferred down.

The wells should work indefinitely. The machinery used to circulate the water would have a lifespan of 50–100 years. The Seminary expects the geothermal project to be completed “in a couple of years,” Burnley said, because of the work needed to connect the wells to the campus systems.