Mount Holyoke College pauses plans to build hub for its $180M geothermal heating system

Karla Youngblood, associate vice president for facilities management at Mount Holyoke College, speaks last December about the college’s $180 million project to construct a geothermal heating system. The college has put the project on hold due to uncertainties with potential tariffs and economic downturn.

Karla Youngblood, associate vice president for facilities management at Mount Holyoke College, speaks last December about the college’s $180 million project to construct a geothermal heating system. The college has put the project on hold due to uncertainties with potential tariffs and economic downturn. STAFF FILE PHOTO

By EMILEE KLEIN

Staff Writer

Published: 06-15-2025 11:00 AM

SOUTH HADLEY — Mount Holyoke College will indefinitely pause construction of its geothermal pump hub — the heart of its $180 million effort to build a carbon-neutral heating and cooling system — due to uncertainties with potential tariffs and economic downturn.

The college announced the project’s halt at a public meeting on June 5, pushing the completion past its original 2025 date. Mount Holyoke plans to celebrate its bicentennial in 2037 by proclaiming its campus carbon neutral, and officials remain steadfast on this goal despite the decision, said spokesperson Christian Feuerstein.

The hub, which consists of heating and cooling pumps that run on solar power, is planned for a site on Woodbridge Street next to All Saints’ Episcopal Church, but Feuerstein said the decision to pause construction means that the location may change.

“The chosen spot was the most suitable of the four locations considered for the hub, but that designation may change when the project resumes at some point in the future,” Feuerstein said in a statement.

Abutters to the hub used the June 5 meeting with college officials as another opportunity to raise concerns about the building’s impact on air quality, noise and traffic, though resident Martha Terry wrote in a letter to the editor to the Daily Hampshire Gazette that she and other abutters did not feel that their concerns were heard.

“The MHC panel of administrators and engineers who sat in front of the auditorium seemed to repeat prepared, evasive responses to questions raised by attendees,” Terry wrote. “But did they hear the impassioned pleas to relocate this building elsewhere?”

While the abutters’ complaints were not the reasoning behind the project’s pause, the college remains open to the possibility of moving the hub’s location and continues to encourage residents to voice their concerns, officials said.

Mount Holyoke is investing $180 million into building a carbon-neutral heating and cooling system for all of its academic and residential buildings using ground-source heat pumps and 240, 600-foot-deep bores under its rugby field. The project also calls for insulation improvements, window replacement and air conditioning installations in the college’s two-century-old buildings.

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Planning for the project started in 2019 and construction of the 26 miles of distribution piping began in 2023. Just before stopping the project, the college had finished the first part of Phase 3, and will continue digging underground bores until October.

As explained by Karla Youngblood, associate vice president for facilities management, Mount Holyoke’s geothermal heat system harvests heat from the air using air-source heat pumps and heat emitted from buildings. That heat warms water, which then travels through distribution piping and deposits the heat underground for later use.

As summer transitions to autumn and winter, the water in the pipes will absorb the heat from the ground, where it will travel to one of the campus’s three energy areas. Once there, industrialized heat pumps raise the temperature from 55 degrees Fahrenheit to around 131 degrees Fahrenheit. When hot, the water completes its loop, warming buildings between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

While South Hadley residents appreciate the college’s focus on sustainability, abutters to the geothermal pump hub raised several concerns about the location of the main heating plant. A report conducted by O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun Associates found traces of gasoline in the plot’s soil 10 feet below the surface, which were left over from when the land was a gas station. The soil underwent a 10-year remediation in the 1990s, and in 2006, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection declared that the college, which owned the site, achieved a “permanent solution.” Due to the presence of volatile organic compounds, the engineer suggests installing a subsurface venting layer in case any of the gasoline vapors absorb into the building.

Residents also raised concerns about the noise generated from the hub’s backup propane generator. According to a noise study by Salas O’Brien from Bloomfield, Connecticut, the equipment is predicted to not exceed ambient sound levels, but the propane backup generator exceeded the noise ordinance on every property line. However, abutters question how accurate the study is when the noise levels were taken in the middle of the night and not during busy traffic hours.

Emilee Klein can be reached at eklein@gazettenet.com.