|
| |
  
|
Bergen
Record
By ALEX NUSSBAUM, Staff Writer
September
5, 2002
Company ends fight for power generator |
North Jersey's strained water supplies
escaped another threat Wednesday, officials said, after a power
company said it would drop its fight to build a huge generator just
north of the border in New York.
A day before a new round of hearings on the project, British-owned
American National Power Inc. surprised opponents on both sides of
the border by announcing it would withdraw its application to build
the natural-gas-fired plant on Torne Valley Road, five miles north
of Mahwah.
The company said it couldn't find enough takers for the 1,100
megawatts of power the plant would generate in the steep valley in
Hillburn, N.Y. The decision ended a battle that had raged in both
states for nearly four years. |
"This is a clear victory for Bergen
County and the people of our watershed," said Bergen Executive
William "Pat" Schuber, who warned the plant could deplete
and poison key water supplies. "The arguments we raised with
regard to the danger to our water supply is even more poignant now
because of the drought we've been in."
The proposed plant, one of the biggest generator projects in the
nation, would have been blasted into a mountainside near the Ramapo
River and above the Ramapo Aquifer, the underground lake that
parallels the river as it passes from Rockland County into Bergen
County. Both bodies of water feed wells and reservoirs that supply
2.5 million people in New Jersey. |
| ANP, a subsidiary of International Power
Inc., made the announcement in London on Wednesday, though the
company hadn't officially pulled its permit application before New
York State regulators.
But a spokesman, Greg Kelley said, "Circumstances would
really have to change quite significantly" for American
National to resurrect the idea.
It was the second defeat in less than a year for a power project in
the narrow crease of a valley bordered on three sides by New York's
Harriman State Park. Last December, Sithe Energies Inc., a New York
City company, dropped plans to build an 827-megawatt plant near the
American National project and also cited the faltering market.
Waldwick Mayor Jim Toolen, whose constituents draw water from
wells fed
by the Ramapo system, said the |
problem with the proposal was chiefly one
of location.
"We were never opposed to a power plant being built in the
region, and we encouraged that," he said. "But our
position is it shouldn't be built right over our water supply, where
it could impact so many people."
Blasting into nearby mountains to build the plant could have damaged
the aquifer below, Toolen and other critics argued. The company also
planned to store ammonia on site for its air pollution control
systems. Opponents feared the chemical could seep into the aquifer
or brook and poison the water supply.
Formally dubbed the Ramapo Energy Project, the plant would have
sucked an average of 21,000 gallons of water a day from the river to
cool its generators - but as much as 72,000 gallons when electricity
demand was at its peak.
|
| The company said it would use a
state-of-the-art cooling system to minimize water use and would take
nothing at all during droughts, when it would use a reserve supply stored
in water tanks.
But New Jersey officials said development on both sides of the border
was already straining the Ramapo's supply. Besides wells in New Jersey,
the river helps fill the Wanaque and Monksville reservoirs, which supply
2.5 million customers in the northern part of the state.
On the New York side, opponents said the plant would foul the skies with
air pollution and destroy an endangered timber rattlesnake snake habitat.
The Ramapough Mountain People, a group of about 1,200 in both states who
claim Native American roots, filed an "environmental justice"
lawsuit against the company last year. |
The suit claimed the Ramapoughs had been
sickened by decades of industrial pollution in the region, and that adding
the power plant would amount to a violation of their civil rights.
Kelley, the company spokesman, said the rattlesnakes were a factor in
the decision to pull out. But American National maintained that none of
the other environmental issues were serious.
"Over the years, we've really tried to address every and any
concern," he said. "We felt it was a good project."
New York utility officials had planned to hold a hearing today to begin
debating the air pollution complaints and other issues. Critics of the
project, though they said they expected to prevail, were caught off guard
by the timing of the announcement. |
| More than any environmental opposition,
however, the plant was shot down by the vagaries of the electric power
market, both sides agreed.
Both Torne Valley proposals were among hundreds of plants pitched by
power companies around the country, as states deregulated their power
markets to foster more competition.
Toolen, the Waldwick mayor, is also a partner in a firm that measures
pollution from power plant smokestacks. He's seen many of those proposals
go by the wayside in the past few months, he said.
"It's really a post-Enron fallout," he said. "It was
driven largely by projections of future energy use and they turned out to
be somewhat inflated and that meant many of the companies, like Enron,
turned out to be inflated. Now, they're all pulling back." |
The fate of the 62 acres American Power planned
to build on, and more than 200 acres in Torne Valley, now rest with land
owners who planned to lease to the utilities.
Activists and officials in Rockland and Bergen said they would
concentrate on trying to buy the properties to preserve them as open
space.
The Palisades Interstate Park Commission is already in negotiations to
purchase some of the property, though it's a long way from a final deal,
said Executive Director Carol Ash.
Schuber added, "The clear priority we have now as a state and
hopefully as a region is to make the safety of our watersheds paramount.
"I'm hoping that as a result of this withdrawal, that might start a
spark to get both states working on that." |
|
