LIVERMORE FALLS – Town Manager Kristal Flagg plans to attend a public meeting Friday with area town managers and interested parties to continue discussion of the possibility of bringing natural gas to the area, Flagg said Tuesday.

The meeting is from 10:30 a.m. to noon Feb. 22 at the Farmington Town Office.

A natural-gas pipeline was installed in 1998 to Verso Paper Corp.'s Androscoggin Mill in Jay, and discussions will focus on the possibility of extending that line to Farmington.

The 16.5 mile Jay lateral of the Portland Natural Gas Transmission System came from a 26.5-mile Rumford lateral to Route 140. It went under the Androscoggin River to a co-generation, natural gas-fired plant that went online in 2000 adjacent to the Jay mill. Verso Paper Corp. now owns the plant.

The pipeline ran parallel to the electrical transmission system corridor. The project was part of a 292-mile natural gas pipeline being built from Pittsburg, N. H.

The idea is to extend the line from the Jay area.

Initially, the talk was about extending the line to go toward Farmington, Flagg said. But officials found a lot of businesses in the Livermore Falls area could benefit from the project, she said.

The Livermore Falls area businesses and Flagg requested that the line, if it is installed, also go to the Livermore Falls area stopping at PalletOne, Inc. on Route 133, formerly known as Isaacson Lumber.

There are businesses from Farmington to Livermore Falls interested in the project.

Those businesses represent a potential savings of 2 million gallons of heating oil, Farmington Town Manager Richard Davis recently said.

dperry@sunjournal.com