Mark Megahan
Well known Eagle River Whiskey is about to rename as the Minturn Whiskey Company. The small Colorado town of the same name, in the vicinity of Vail, is about to be the site of an interesting project. The Whiskey brewers hope that a beneficial service they can provide the town will justify approval of a license for them to distill their own liquor. The town has too much snow, especially on the roads. Meanwhile, whiskey producers are gearing up to generate a whole lot of excess heat. Why not use alcohol to bring about safer driving? Now there’s a twist.
Minturn heats up
Minturn business owners Stef and Spence Neubauer hope a partnership between their Eagle River Whiskey operation and the town can be a benefit for all involved.
They happen to own a piece of property at the intersection of Nelson and Main streets in the heart of the tiny hamlet. They would like to build a distillery there in the near future. They’re willing to rename as part of the deal in a way of providing the town with free publicity.
Nelson street is also infamous for its hill. Everyone in the town of Minturn knows it has a tendency to ice over and stay icy, all winter long. It seems to scoff at road salt and plows.
It’s also “a major safety hazard in town as the hill terminates at an intersection with Williams Street, causing near misses for vehicles sliding down the Nelson Street hill into that intersection.” The Neubauers have an interesting solution.
A major contributor to the problem is a lack of sunlight. “Even on the sunniest of days, the Nelson Street hill remains shaded and frozen.”
Engineers in days long gone turned the excess steam from their power plants into service, melting snow by running pipes or tunnels under the road beds. Technology has improved and excess heat from the Minturn Whiskey Company distillery can be diverted under Nelson Street to clear the ice.
Tear up the road
The town of Minturn was already searching for a solution. “Continually, we have heard concerns from residents about the safety of this hill,” Town Manager Michelle Metteer recently informed the town council. “So we have started taking a look at how we can improve safety in this area.” They already considered talking to the distillers.
“One of the town’s ideas was to approach the whiskey company’s owners and see what they might have had planned for the excess heat that the distilling process will create.” The Neubauers were glad they asked.
“In Scotland, they use their heated water to heat swimming pools and things like that, and I had always wanted to do something similar in Minturn,” Stef Neubauer relates.
She kicked around the idea of a laundromat and a few other options but “what I really wanted to do is snowmelt.” There was only one snag. “However, our engineers told me it’s too cost-prohibitive because you have to tear up the roads.”
Funny you should mention that, the town counters back. Nelson street happens to “look pretty torn up as it is.” Ms. Metteer confirms “it could be a good time to go a bit further with the reconstruction of the road and install the snowmelt system.” They’re willing to cover a bunch of the cost. “We anticipate there’s an initial up-front cost that will be higher, but the long-term opportunity to capture some of our net zero goals might be realized.” Minturn is well on the way to inking a deal. “Neubauer said the heat from the boiling system could easily be transferred to a closed series of pipes that could be run underneath the hill on Nelson Street, and possibly even Williams Street and the distillery’s parking lot.”
They’re using a similar system up and running in Holland, Michigan as an example. It’s “probably the largest such operation in the country. In that city, 95-degree water is diverted away from the cooling towers of a nearby power plant and into a large tubing system underneath the streets.” Minturn Town Council “approved the placement of a line item into the 2025 budget for a potential apportion to be made at a future date to support the construction.” As soon as they get the conditional use permit.
