Commentary: DEC must deny Orange County power plant's air permit
Originally published in
Times Union
on
.
“Wait, how is a power plant continuing to operate without the required air permit?”
This is the question posed to me by anyone who learns about the Competitive Power Ventures plant’s operations, including high-level government staffers. It’s the same question residents of Orange County have been asking themselves — and their elected leaders — for years.
Since its inception, CPV, a gas-fired power plant in the Town of Wawayanda, has plagued Orange County with toxic pollutants and noise that threaten our health and our quality of life. It’s been nearly seven years since the plant was given a provisional extension to operate under its existing “state facility” permit, and questions are still unanswered regarding the extent of the damage the plant will cause to local communities and residents, and whether CPV will be a permanent fixture for the Hudson Valley.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has yet to approve or deny the company’s outstanding Air Title V Facility permit. All the while, CPV operates without the required permit.
Last year, the Senate’s Committee on Investigations and Government Operations released an investigative report on CPV that exposed numerous regulatory and statutory deficiencies in CPV’s operations, as well as troubling patterns of influence by the former governor’s executive branch.
CPV’s continued operation doesn’t just fly in the face of governmental integrity and the public’s trust; it serves as a de facto bat signal to other predatory corporations looking for a soft place to land. Achieving its preferred outcome with virtually no repercussions sends a message to similarly self-interested companies that they, too, can flourish in New York — running roughshod over our laws, regulations and communities -- and that policymakers and regulators will inevitably turn a blind eye.
But the DEC has a chance to finally prove itself as our David to CPV’s Goliath.
In March, the DEC held a long-awaited public hearing to consider CPV’s Title V permit. Thousands of neighbors presented testimony or submitted written comments against the permit’s approval, citing the myriad health and environmental concerns, the improper influence that’s gotten the facility this far, and the need to uphold New York’s pioneering climate law enacted a few years ago. Now the DEC must stand strong and deny the permit, just as it did in denying the Danskammer Plant’s identical permit in Newburgh and the Astoria Gas Turbine Power facility in Queens a few years ago — both justified under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.
Our right to clean air and water is now constitutionally protected here in New York, and CPV is a direct threat to this right. It’s time we started acting like it. I am urging the acting DEC commissioner to wholeheartedly reject CPV’s Title V permit, shut the plant down and let Orange County residents breathe a clean sigh of relief once and for all.
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