Steaming ahead

Concord Steam Corp. has started work at the South End site where it plans to build a new wood-burning plant even though the company hasnt secured financing for the more-than million facility.

A new access road is being built on the land near Langdon Avenue and South Main Street and the foundation for a new truck scale will be poured this week wrote Peter Bloomfield Concord Steams president, in an email last week.The construction means Concord Steam beat a deadline to break ground on the project or it would have lost crucial federal tax credits.This is to just get our foot in the door so that we do not lose the tax credits Bloomfield wrote.

Concord Steam bought the land in and announced plans to built a megawatt wood-burning plant to replace its aging plant on the New Hampshire Hospital campus. After years of delays the city and state governments agreed in August to buy power from the plant for at least years clearing the way for the company to assemble financing and begin construction.

The plant itself will presumably be built after financing for the project has been secured. Concord Steam provides heat to about downtown buildings.Sprint says its customers in northern New England should begin noticing improved cellular service because of ongoing work to upgrade its network in the area.

Sprint has made a dozen upgrades to improve network capacity in Maine Vermont and New Hampshire over the past days with more planned in the next three months the company said last week in a news release.