PSC seeks input on power plant; Facility opposed by fracking, compressor foes

Posted 8/21/12

TOWN OF WAWAYANDA, NY — A company called Competitive Power Ventures Valley (CPV Valley) is seeking to build a gas-fired power plant that will generate enough power to supply more than 650,000 homes …

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PSC seeks input on power plant; Facility opposed by fracking, compressor foes

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TOWN OF WAWAYANDA, NY — A company called Competitive Power Ventures Valley (CPV Valley) is seeking to build a gas-fired power plant that will generate enough power to supply more than 650,000 homes and provide what the company calls “a growing demand for power and need for increased reliability in the lower Hudson Valley.”

The company promotes the facility as being state of the art and says, “It will be one of the cleanest conventional electric generating projects in the world when it comes on-line in 2016.”

But there are a number of people and organizations who are familiar with the world of gas infrastructure who say the facility is not needed.

Some of those people will undoubtedly turn out to the public hearing on the matter to be held by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) on Tuesday, February 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Orange County Community College Library/Gilman Center, Room 130, in Middletown.

Before the PSC allows the project to move forward, it must determine whether the facility is necessary and convenient for the public.

CPV Valley says the project is not only necessary, but it’s good for the economy because it puts New Yorkers “back to work.” The company also says it’s friendly to the environment. It says the “dry-cooling design saves more than 85%of the water used by similar wet-cooled facilities. The water the project does require will come from recycled water it purchases from the City of Middletown.”

But others dispute that. Manna Jo Greene, environmental action director of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc., wrote a letter to Middletown mayor Joe DeStefano in May 2013 that experts like Dr. Anthony Ingraffea and Dr. Jannette M. Barth, who have been active in the campaign against fracking, and others, “conclude that it is technically and economically feasible to convert New York’s energy infrastructure to one powered by wind, water and sunlight at significant savings in human lives and infrastructure as well as decreased greenhouse gas emissions, pollution and damages caused by the resultant climate change and extreme weather. Given this, CPV’s claim to ‘clean energy’ production is unsubstantiated.”

The letter continued: “CPV’s reliance on hydrofracked natural gas delivered to the proposed power plant by means of the Millennium Pipeline and the Minisink Compressor Station, which both pose additional health and safety risks as well as property devaluation and harm to the environment, will increase and prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, which will ultimately result in great human, environmental and economic costs.”

Meanwhile, the community group fighting the continued operation of the Minisink compressor station in court has also joined the campaign against the CPV Valley project. The group Stop Minisink Compressor Station (StopMCS) is awaiting a determination in federal court to see if the process by which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a license to Millennium Pipeline Company for the compressor station, located seven miles from the proposed power plant, was flawed.

Even if the group does not succeed, their progress in the issue shows that attitudes among officials regarding fossil fuel-fired power plants may be shifting slightly. In a very rare division among FERC commissioners, two of the five commissioners agreed with the residents nearby that there was a better location for the compressor that would meet the company’s needs yet would have much less of an impact on the residents of the area.

The facility went online back in the spring of 2013, despite the ongoing legal action. Since then, Asha Canalos of StopMCS writes that residents have been adversely impacted: “Symptoms experienced by Minisink residents—adults and children—include nosebleeds, dizziness, nausea, fatigue and disorientation, sore throats and full body rashes.”

StopMCS has issued an appeal for people to turn up at the public hearing and speak against the proposed power plant. Another group has formed in opposition to the plant called Protect Orange County (www.blog.protectorangecounty.org).

The well established group Orange Environment, Incorporated (OEI) is also opposed to the project. In a letter to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in June 2013, OEI President Michael R. Edelsteiz wrote, “OEI believes that this facility is not required to maintain grid capacity in the New York region. Given the adverse impacts of fracking and the urgency of greenhouse gas reduction, we do not believe that this facility should be permitted at all.”

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