Plant aims to meet growing energy needs

This is the last in a series of articles about the Cricket Valley Energy Center being built now in Dover, N.Y. Part one ran in the June 21 Lakeville Journal; part 2 ran in the June 28 edition. Both articles may be found online at  www.tricornernews.com.

If New York state gets a new, less-polluting power company to help feed the hunger for electricity of its residents in New York City and Westchester County and other parts of the state, what does the town of Dover get?

Of great significance: it gets an abandoned industrial property completely scrubbed clean. A new industrial concern will take over that property, but it is governed by 21st-century best practices and regulations concerning toxic materials and pollution.

At the peak of its construction cycle, the Cricket Valley Energy Center (CVEC) has about 1,100 jobs for workers available and the company has promised to buy as many of its materials as possible from local vendors. 

Once the plant is complete, there will be about 24 jobs (available to highly skilled workers) at the plant. CVEC seems to feel it can find qualified workers in the area; it has said in its official documents that the company does not expect to bring new families or build new houses in the area and that it does not expect that the presence of CVEC will add to the number of students at the local public schools. 

In other words, CVEC will not particularly require municipal services. The plant will have its own security and fire detection, alarm and suppression safety equipment and will work with the town and the J.H. Ketcham volunteer fire company in Dover.

CVEC is also contributing to the community in a variety of ways, from helping pay for small construction projects in town (a well and water filtration system at a local park, a salt shed and pole barn for the town as well as some heavy equipment it will donate after construction of the plant is done) to funding a scholarship for local students that is guaranteed to be offered for the next 30 years.

But most important, of course, is the contribution of annual funds to the town for municipal expenses, which include everything from the salaries of town officials and the cost of street lights to the cost of plowing snow and sanding the roads in winter. 

Dover is a town with a population of about 8,600. The appropriation approved at town meeting for the coming fiscal year shows a spending total of $5,303,063. New York state has a property tax cap; for that reason, Dover is not allowed to raise more than $2,824,006 in 2018 from property taxes.

Cricket Valley will not pay property taxes to Dover. Instead it will make what are known as PILOT payments, or payments in lieu of taxes. 

Over the course of the next 30 years, Cricket Valley will pay the town about $157 million. The payments begin at about $3.3 million and will escalate to about $7.9 million.

Air quality

Connecticut residents who have expressed concern about the energy plant seem most interested in the possibility of air pollution drifting out of the plant’s three stacks across the state line into the nearby towns of Kent (which is 5 miles from the plant). 

The plant will have three stacks, each of them 282.5 feet tall. Some people have expressed concern that the plant is on a hilltop and will blow any emissions away from Dover and into Connecticut; other people have expressed concern that the plant is in a valley and that emissions will sit there, unable to be blown away by wind. (The project is in the Ten Mile River Valley.)

There doesn’t seem to be any disagreement about the fact that there will be emissions from the plant. 

However, Cricket Valley claims that in order to obtain an Air Quality permit, CVEC had to demonstrate that it would not appreciably degrade existing air quality levels.

However, the company also notes that Dover does not have especially clean air to begin with — or as CVEC says, “Dover is located within an area designated as not in attainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ozone (smog).”

Somewhat surprisingly, Litchfield County is also considered an area with poor air quality. The American Lung Association gives Litchfield County an F for air quality, as it does to every county but one in Connecticut. 

Emissions offsets

However, because Dover already is considered to have poor air quality, the restrictions placed on CVEC are actually more stringent than they might be in a cleaner air area. 

They are required to apply what are called Lowest Achievable Emission Rate standards to the project; and they are required to buy emissions offsets in order to get a New York Department of Environmental Conservation permit. Because Dover is in an EPA-designated “non-attainment zone” for Nitrogen Oxides and Volatile Organic Compounds, the company had to purchase offsets for these emissions. 

The emissions offsets have also been a talking point for some people who are concerned about the plant. 

For a truly detailed explanation of what pollutants will be given off by the plant and in what amounts, it will be perhaps most useful to go to the Cricket Valley Energy website at www.cricketvalleyenergy.com, go to  Environmental Review, go to Documents, go to the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and open the Air Resources summary, which is 93 pages long. It can also be found on the town of Dover’s website at www. townofdoverny.us/CricketValleyEnergy.cfm.

The short version, however, is that there will be emissions but they are being monitored and are subject not only to New York State regulations but also federal regulations and Connecticut regulations. The FEIS does specify that the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection was notified about the project early on, as was the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.

In June, because residents of Kent (which is 5 miles from the power plant), had expressed concern that emissions would pollute the air in Kent, state Rep. Brian Ohler (R-64) and state Sen. Craig Miner (R-30) sent a letter to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection asking for air quality monitoring to be done in Connecticut; and asking that the monitoring begin right away so there is a baseline.

CVEC is already required by state and federal authorities to do air quality monitoring at the site, to ensure that the plant complies with all air permit requirements including making sure the air is healthy for “the most sensitive members of the population.”

The company has also installed an air quality monitoring station at the Dover high school, which is a half mile from the plant. The air monitoring gear is available for use by the students, the town of Dover and anyone else who’s interested.  

The larger air-quality picture

From a larger, greenhouse gases point of view, the CVEC will displace older, more polluting power plants, reducing emissions in the state and the region by as much as 650,000 tons. 

Also from a regional viewpoint, the federal regulations don’t just protect New York state residents. No matter where a project is, it must meet uniform standards. A company spokesman said, “CVEC will  comply with National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) at levels determined to be protective of the health of the most sensitive members of the public, including children, the elderly, and those with respiratory illness, such as chronic asthma and emphysema.”

There is no sense, in other words, that it’s fine if it pollutes Connecticut as long as it doesn’t pollute New York. 

New York is also one of the 27 states that is regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2011 Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.

The FEIS for the project also notes that “greenhouse gases are global pollutants; therefore, in which power pool emissions occur are of no consequence.” 

‘Retiring’ older plants

Some people with concerns about the plant have said that they feel that Dover will get a polluting power plant and that the older power plants that are being displaced are in distant spots such as West Virginia. 

No power plants are going to be closed down specifically because Cricket Valley is being built. But CVEC believes that — because the plant will be competing with other plants in New York — it will induce the owners of the older, less efficient plants to “retire” them. This is an economic belief; the New York power grid, or ISO, buys the least expensive power. 

Cricket Valley Energy claims that its facility “will use the most advanced, state-of-the-art power generation technology available, making it one of New York’s most efficient energy producers.” In another document, the company claims that “The project will be among the lowest-emitting, most water-efficient facilities of its type ever constructed” and it will displace” the operation of older,  higher-emitting generators, yielding significant regional emissions reductions.”

CVEC is expected to displace those other, older power plants, that use coal and oil, because the New York ISO will always buy its power first from the least expensive sources. Because CVEC is so efficient, it will in theory be able to produce more electricity using less natural gas, which means it will generally produce the lowest-priced and most attractive power.

Greener sources of power

Some people concerned about the plant have asked why a natural gas plant is being built instead of power sources such as wind, solar and hydro.

The answer is that CVEC will be a “baseload generator” that can make power in all conditions. According to a company spokesman, CVEC will be well positioned to provide power when renewable sources of energy which depend on the availability of wind, sun and water, are not available. Natural gas is also considered the cleanest of all the fossil fuels, she noted.

In other words, if power produced by air, wind or water is available in abundance and inexpensive, then the NYISO will buy it first. But the government requires power providers to always have a baseload power producer that can meet the needs of electricity users even on days when there is no sun, wind or rushing water.  That’s what it means when the company says Cricket Valley is a baseload generator. 

There has also been concern that the U.S. EPA under the current presidential administration will be more protective of business and less so of human health and the environment. The conditions placed on the Cricket Valley project were set in 2013 and have not changed significantly. One CVEC employee said that he believes the restrictions can not be changed now that they are in place.

Use less electricity

There are also efforts being made to reduce energy use  among consumers. 

In one public hearing,  Dutchess County Legislator Alan Surman observed, “I don’t think anybody in this room would like to go back 100 years to the way it was. We use power every day. We use power for our laptops, we use power for safe lighting instead of candles, we use power for our plasma TVs, we use power for our washing machines and our air conditioners.”

Who knew, and when

The FEIS Executive Summary alone is almost 150 pages; of that, almost 100 pages is a detailed listing of all comments made at public hearings and in letters from area residents and environmental groups, with detailed responses from Cricket Valley representatives. These comments were also considered by regulators as part of the permitting process.

The first comment listed in that section is from two representatives of the Housatonic Valley Association, which is a group based in Cornwall that protects the lands surrounding Connecticut’s Housatonic River: Tonia Shoumatoff, who lives in New York State, and Elaine LaBella, who lives in Kent. 

This is worth noting because one of the main concerns that Kent residents raised at a June 5 meeting  with their selectmen was that no one in Connecticut knew anything about the plans for the energy plant until this year. 

The FEIS was released in July 2012. The comment quoted from the HVA representatives is a request that the appendixes in the final statement be labeled in a way that makes it easier for people to read it and to glean information from it.

Most of the residents of Dover and the nearby New York state towns also expressed concern in their comments in the FEIS that they weren’t aware that any projects were being considered. The Cricket Valley representatives respond in the FEIS that they held 15 public workshops and two open-houses in a two-year period; and that “invitations were extended to every household in Dover via a mailed postcard, were publicized in the CVEC newsletter which is also mailed to every household in Dover, were announced on the Cricket Valley Energy website and were publicized via advertisements and press releases in local newspapers and periodicals” such as the Pawling Press, The Millerton News, the Millbrook Independent and the Pennysaver. 

Also, the FEIS explains, “the town of Dover and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation have held six formal public meetings since May of 2009 to solicit public comment, with each of these meetings publicized via advertisements, postcard mailings, road signs, press releases and announcements on the Cricket Valley Energy website.”

It’s also worth noting that Eversource has been informed about the construction process. CVEC is responsible for upgrading the transmission lines for electricity up to the Connecticut border; Eversource is responsible for upgrading and expanding the transmission lines and poles on this side of the border.