STRONG – A $6.5 million wood-pellet mill is planned for the former Forster Manufacturing plant, producing fuel to heat schools and other public buildings and employing 30 full-time people when it opens next May.

Marshall Swain of Rangeley Plantation and Stephen Chute of Rumford have partnered with D.G. Energy from San Diego, Calif., to buy, renovate and use the mill that has sat idle for the past five years, selectmen’s Chairman Rebecca Croteau said this week.

The mill will run three shifts and will use approximately 150,000 tons of hardwood a year, Croteau said. Wood will be purchased locally at a pay scale equivalent to what D.G. Energy pays on a national level, she said.

Closing on the property, which is owned by Jeff and Lucinda Allen of Strong, is expected soon. Mill developers have permits from the Department of Environmental Protection and the Office of the State Fire Marshal, Croteau said.

The town is not zoned so local permits are not necessary, she said, in reference to the board learning about the plan this week.

“We’re excited with the news,” she said. “You hear different things but until they tell you… now they are at the point where they wanted us to know what is going on.”

Modification of the plant is planned to start by the first of October with a goal of being fully operational by May 1, 2008. Plans include a $6.5 million investment, she said.

“D.G. Energy’s sale of the wood pellets will be located out of Boston,” Croteau said. “But, they have already sold their product five years in advance. Sales center on schools and other public buildings.”

The town’s school system, SAD 58, has plans to heat the bus garage across from Mt. Abram High School with pellets this year, Superintendent Quenten Clark said Thursday. After burning 16-tons of corn at the garage last year, they found the corn worked well but provided too much heat and required maintenance, and with the cost of corn rising they decided to convert to wood pellets, he said.

The school system had found a bulk pellet supplier in Canada for $300 a ton. But of course, the school would like to be able to buy from a local dealer, he said.

“It’s wonderful news for Strong. It should be more than 30 jobs with trucking and logging jobs too. I used to work for the paper industry and the amount of wood consumed then is not happening now in the paper mills. As for wood resource, we’re the Saudi Arabia of wood fuel but I wish the state office of energy would get on board and start promoting it,” Clark said.

The board will tour the facility and learn about the pellet operation at noon today with Swain, Chute and representatives from the company, she said.

Neither Swain nor Chute could be reached for comment Thursday.

“They were concerned over the noise they’ll produce and the increased truck traffic of approximately 25 pulp trucks per day coming to the mill,” Croteau said, “but after living near Forsters for almost 30 years, we’re used to it.”

The dryer to dry the pellets would be the noisiest part, she said they explained, but they plan to have it inside the plant.

The mill will use water from the town’s reservoir so a water contract will have to be negotiated, she said. The company plans to use the power plant already there to produce power.