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Power Point
Across New York, building new power plants
Host communities, environmentalists want a say in siting
Anne Reynolds
Proposals for new power plants abound, although there is a distinct concentration in New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. For the past decade, companies proposing to build new plants have been governed by Article X of the Public Service Law. Designed to streamline the permitting process for new plants, Article X establishes a state siting board for each individual proposal. The law, which applies only to power plants that will generate 80 megawatts or more of electricity, has always been controversial. Because it expires at the end of 2002, reform or elimination of the siting law is already being discussed in Albany, with some kind of action likely by year’s end.
Builders complain that the siting process has been too slow. An industry coalition has already proposed reforms that would speed up the process and further limit community participation in the decision-making process. On the other hand, those who will be forced to live near the plants are often unsatisfied with their limited opportunities to influence or prevent these dramatic and lasting changes to their neighborhoods. Local government is unable to stop unpopular proposals because the siting board can supersede local laws.
The siting board itself is directly appointed by the Governor and lacks a diversity of views. And, under the state’s electric industry deregulation scheme, the Public Service Commission has done away with any analysis of public need or benefit for a new power plant, thus eviscerating important opportunities for public debate. Further, proposals are considered on a first-come/first-served basis, with no consideration of real alternatives or priorities. For all of these reasons, the siting process should be improved to make it a more effective, thoughtful and circumspect planning tool.
Toward that goal, a new network of environmental, public health, historic preservation and community groups — called the New York State Sustainable Energy Campaign (NYSSEC) — has formed to work collectively on siting reform and the promotion of clean energy resources for New York. NYSSEC was launched at an Albany conference organized by Environmental Advocates in November that included the New York Public Interest Research Group, Communities United for Responsible Energy, Clearwater, Riverkeeper, Scenic Hudson and several local community groups from around the state. The coalition’s first effort was to develop a power plant siting reform platform and model legislation.
The reforms are designed to fix siting problems that have plagued community and environmental groups for years. Community groups, for example, find that important decisions are often made before they become involved as official intervenors. And, although they get funding for technical assistance, intervenors cannot use the funds for legal services. As a result, community groups feel powerless before the siting board, and sometimes aren’t even allowed to use the data provided by their technical advisors. And there are equity concerns. When several plants are proposed for the same geographic area, there is no analysis of total impact on public health or the environment or best alternative sites and no environmental justice analysis is conducted.
Siting law should be aligned with the state’s environmental goals. In many cases, community activists are told they should support new plants, as they will undoubtedly displace dirtier power. But this displacement is not guaranteed, and old polluting plants continue to belch pollution out of proportion to the electricity they provide. New York should require old facilities to meet modern standards, encourage upgrades and improve efficiency and air quality. The siting procedures should also prioritize projects that re-power existing plants. Community residents support proposals to increase output at a site when the net air pollution and water withdrawals will decrease. These win-win proposals should be encouraged, while plants in already-burdened neighborhoods, in areas not meeting air quality standards, or that threaten natural resources should be scrapped. d
Fund appeal
Jeff Jones
Recession and the costs of the World Trade Center attacks continue to limit state spending, but even the most experienced observers of Albany politics are surprised to learn that no money at all was appropriated from the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) in the current fiscal year (ending 3/31/2002). That means one whole funding cycle will pass without any EPF money for open space protection, agriculture and farmland preservation, parks projects or county recycling programs.
Unless the deficit is made up with full EPF funding in the new budget, exciting acquisition projects like one along the Moose River in the Western Adirondacks will be at risk. Other programs may also fail. Last year, according to the American Farmland Trust, there were $78 million worth of applications to the EPF's farmland preservation account and the Park's Council says there were about $98 million in applications for parks projects. Even if fully funded under the Governor's proposed budget, there would only have been $6 million available for farms and $8 million for parks. Considering that most of the money from the 1996 Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act is appropriated, New York's environmental funding crisis is the worst in more than a decade.
Fighting to restore a year's worth of lost funding spurred a major effort by most state-level environmental groups along with representatives of virtually all the other constituencies who benefit from the EPF. Starting in November, a Friends of the EPF coalition, co-chaired by Environmental Advocates and The Nature Conservancy, pushed for passage of a deficiency budget to restore at least the statutory minimum of $125 million in fund appropriations. In his January budget proposal, Gov. George Pataki seemed to agree, offering that amount in a deficiency budget and proposing another $125 million in the upcoming year's budget. Unfortunately, the Governor also proposed using nearly a fifth of those funds to repay the state general fund for non-EPF projects. The Governor also proposed sweeping an additional $100 million from the EPF account into the general fund, for a total of more than $150 million diverted over two years.
Although there are indications that serious budget talks are underway at the Capitol, it was clear by mid-March that any deficiency budget that passed would not include the EPF. Assembly leadership said it preferred negotiating the EPF as part of the discussions about the new fiscal year's budget. While some 50 groups in the EPF coalition continued to urge passage of a deficiency budget, they also wrote to the Governor and legislative leaders insisting on a full $250 million appropriation, without the off-loading of any general fund projects into the EPF and without the $100 million sweep.
Meanwhile, in testimony before a joint Assembly/Senate hearing on the budget in late February, Environmental Advocates not only opposed the redirection of dedicated funds, but called for an expansion of the EPF to $300 million as soon as possible.
DIRECTOR'S CHAIR
Val Washington
Governor Pataki’s announcement last June that he was appointing a global warming task force was welcome news, as was his stated commitment to "positioning New York State as a national leader on the critically important issue of reducing greenhouse gases." The Governor subsequently named representatives from business, government, academia and the environment to the panel, which is scheduled to deliver its recommendations in June. Four representatives from the environmental community were appointed, including Environmental Advocates. We have worked closely with our colleagues from the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, Environmental Defense and the New York League of Conservation Voters, as well as the Pace University Energy Project. Together we have developed an agenda that, if adopted, would not only achieve the Governor’s national leadership goals, but would make the state a world leader as well.
Global warming is both real and unfathomable to most of us. All but a few industry-financed scientists and clueless politicians understand that industrial age pollution is altering the Earth’s climate. The Columbia Earth Institute at Columbia University recently issued an interim report, Climate Change and a Global City, looking at possible consequences for the New York City metropolitan area. It warns of a rise in sea level and catastrophic storms. Melting polar ice would not only affect hundreds of miles of shoreline, but could also flood significant portions of New York City's underground infrastructure. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has already modeled the danger of a hurricane-driven surge of sea water hitting the city at high tide. Until now, emergency planners have treated this scenario as a once-in-a-century event; now they are thinking it may be once every 20 years. Scientists are even predicting possible changes in the Adirondacks, including the loss of the sugar maple population and trout habitat.
New York will suffer greatly if the predicted consequences come to pass, but our leadership can inspire greater effort by others to reduce global warming, especially the federal government. We are recommending a series of steps to reduce carbon emissions, including: increasing investments in energy conservation and the development of renewable resources; increasing the Green Building Tax Credit to aid and reward investments in conservation and efficiency; supporting and expanding the Governor’s executive order requiring across-the-board cuts in energy use by state agencies; and investing in cleaner cars and rebuilding the rail freight system.
As immense as the problem is, our efforts in New York can make an important difference for our state, the nation, and the world. We might begin by redeveloping the World Trade Center site using the most advanced energy efficient technologies and environmentally sound design features. Lower Manhattan could become a symbol of our commitment to world partnership in the fight to rescue our planet.
Taking advantage of cleanup cash
A new federal law could help New York reclaim its
contaminated lands
Val Washington
The federal government has created an important new brownfields law — important to everyone who cares about revitalizing urban neighborhoods, curbing suburban sprawl and protecting communities from toxic blight. The new Brownfield Reform and Small Business Liability Relief Act, signed by President George W. Bush in early January, is intended to enhance state cleanup efforts. Unfortunately, it is not terribly useful in states where there is no comprehensive brownfields program — and that includes New York.
The new act is an amendment to the federal superfund law, originally passed in 1981 to address decades of careless disposal of hazardous wastes. The need for the original law was brought home by revelations at the western New York community known as Love Canal, where a school and residential neighborhood built on a toxic waste dump became contaminated. In the 20 years since that time much has been learned about the pervasiveness of the problem. Hundreds of the most dangerous sites are listed on the federal national priorities list and a second tier comprises New York’s own list of state superfund sites. All of these are eligible for government funding if the parties responsible for the contamination are unknown, bankrupt, or recalcitrant. But there are thousands of other contaminated properties, known as brownfields, that are not dangerous enough to be included in the state or federal superfund programs, but are virtually unusable because of uncertainties about cleanup and liability.
The Brownfield Reform and Small Business Liability Relief Act is designed to help address this problem two ways. First, it will make it easier for people to buy and reuse these properties by relieving new owners of superfund liability, that is, the ability of the federal government to sue over past contamination. Unfortunately, taking away federal liability does little to relieve the anxieties of potential purchasers in the absence of a comprehensive state program. There are simply no rules in New York about cleaning up brownfields or circumscribing liability for those who would like to reclaim and reuse these sites. It is exactly this uncertainty that keeps these properties from being considered as viable opportunities by owners and developers.
Second, the federal law offers money to encourage the cleanup and reuse of brownfields, to be dispersed in the form of grants and loans — $200 million dollars a year will be available for government agencies and non-profit groups. But even with this new money available, other factors will continue to deter brownfields development, such as a lack of clear cleanup standards and government approved cleanup methods. There is also the reasonable fear that a subsequently enacted New York statute would set new rules and offer new incentives for brownfield development. Developers that act prematurely could be forced to redo a project to meet new standards. They also might miss out on substantial tax breaks or other financial benefits offered to those who enter a program that is created under a later-enacted New York law.
There is also the matter of $250 million dollars that will be available over the next five years to help states run their own brownfields programs. The longer New York is without a comprehensive plan, the more this pot of money will be spent in other states. This is in addition to the other consequences of New York’s failure to pass a comprehensive brownfields statute, placing it behind 40 other states that have enacted such laws. Untold opportunities have been lost to other states even as New York’s cities continue to deteriorate, suburbs continue to sprawl while urban redevelopment opportunities are missed and entire communities remain exposed to toxic contamination.
Tire Tracks
An upstate fire rekindles concern about New York's waste tires
David Higby
Waterford, a small Hudson River town in the southeast corner of Saratoga County, found itself at the center of New York's waste tire crisis recently, when a fire broke out at a local dump. Known as the Mohawk Tire Storage Facility, this illegal operation is estimated to contain up to 13 million tires; as many as a million of them reportedly burned in a fire that started March 10 and was still flaring five days later.
Acrid smoke enveloped the neighborhood and threatened air quality at a nearby school. And fire hoses and a pouring rain created a slurry of burned rubber that endangered not only surface water but also the nearby Hudson River. Synthetic rubber, a petroleum-based product, is highly flammable. Once ignited, a tire pile can smoulder for months. Toxics and heavy metals, including dioxins, furans, hydrogen chloride, benzene, cadmium, nickel, zinc, chromium and vanadium, as well as nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and sulfur oxides are given off in extraordinary quantities. Exposure to these substances presents significant health hazards for firefighters and nearby residents, ranging from irritation of the skin, eyes and mucous membranes, to respiratory ailments, depression of the central nervous system and cancer.
New York is well aware of the fire and public health dangers of these tire piles. In fact, the Mohawk tire dump was recently reorganized to include fire lanes and hydrants. Despite an investment of nearly $3 million to stabilize the pile, however, state decision-makers have missed numerous opportunities to prevent what happened in Waterford and relieve New York of its current title as the nation’s leading stockpiler of waste tires.
A 1997 inventory by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) found over a hundred large waste tire stockpiles in New York containing what was then estimated to be over 20 million tires. Of these sites, two were appraised at over five million tires each and six were judged to contain over one million tires each. Incredibly, the Waterford pile did not even make that list, hinting at a significant undercount by state officials. Indeed, many experts believe that 50 million tires is a more realistic number. And New Yorkers discard an additional 18 million tires each year. Although strategies for scrap tire management have progressed in the last few decades, solutions to the problem of the state’s waste tires continue to be ignored.
Several bills have been introduced in the state Legislature to deal with scrap tires — both in stockpiles and as they are generated annually. In 1998, a broad-based group of representatives from industry, Environmental Advocates and others in the environmental community, municipalities, and tire processors, came together to try to break the scrap tire policy deadlock. After two years of difficult negotiations, this group of stakeholders found consensus and drafted legislation.Sponsors stepped forward, including Assemblymember William Colton, chair of the Legislative Commission on Solid Waste, and several senators with major stockpiles in their districts. In the horse-trading at the end of the 2000 legislative session, however, the bill was stripped of most of its substance, including the provisions for cleaning up stockpiles and setting up an infrastructure for creating markets for ground rubber derived from waste tires. All that was left was a state scrap tire council with mandates to issue a report by April 2001 and to identify a specific funding source for the costs of tire management in New York.
Unfortunately, the council missed its deadline by months and was unable to agree on a funding source. With that failure — and the still-burning tires — as a backdrop, Colton and Assemblymember Thomas DiNapoli announced new legislation (A.10260) in mid-March that reflects much of the work of the council. It features a plan to create a state Scrap Tire Utilization and Management Fund, generated by a $1.50 surcharge on motor vehicle registrations. Speaking at a Capitol press conference, Colton said the fund will go toward "eradicating abandoned stockpiles of tens of millions of scrap tires and developing markets for scrap tire end uses."
Environmental Advocates in Short
Good Neighbors
Last summer marked the first season for the new Pesticide Neighbor Notification Law. Four counties — Albany, Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester — opted into the law’s requirements for prior notice of commercial lawn pesticide applications, and one more, Rockland County, joined the program in October. Although future years of pesticide reporting data will provide actual numbers with which to assess the law’s effect, anecdotal evidence already suggests that the law is leading to a reduction in the use of toxic chemicals and a shift to less toxic strategies. In addition, despite industry Cassandras who foretold enormous burdens for counties and applicators alike, conversations with county staff and applicators also indicate that, after an initial start-up flurry, implementation time and cost have been far less than expected. In one endorsement, Albany County’s initial law, which was first approved for one year, was made permanent by the county legislature last fall with an even higher level of support than it had received the first time around. Officials in the Albany County Health Department, who were originally opposed, changed their minds based on their experience and voiced their support for renewal.
As it becomes clear that those counties who have opted in are not experiencing difficulties but are instead seeing a reduction in pesticide use — with the cascade of advantages that follow such a shift — more and more counties are likely to take the plunge. A vote in Erie County seems likely this year and discussions are progressing in Rensselaer County as well.
Bush Whacked
February 4th was a particularly bad day both for family planning and the environment. That's when President George W. Bush submitted his spending plan for the upcoming federal fiscal year and announced the latest appropriations — and lack of appropriations — from the current budget. If Bush has his way, the amount the United States gives to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) will be cut to zero, and the leading international organization providing family planning and reproductive health services worldwide will be short by $68 million. The UNFPA provides essential family planning and reproductive health services, and works to reduce environmental degradation by providing reproductive healthcare and family planning options to couples.
Two recent reports highlight the importance of family planning and protecting the environment. One, Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change, is UNFPA’s annual State of the World Population report. The other, the AAAS Atlas of Population and Environment, was produced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Both reports were the subject of a town hall-type meeting co-sponsored by Environmental Advocates that coincidentally took place at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA) the same day as Bush’s announcement. With more than 100 participants, the event was part of a national series sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and the Center for Environment and Population. Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood, the SUNYA Women’s Studies Department and Campus Action also co-sponsored the event. Speakers discussed how voluntary family planning helps protect the environment by reducing poverty, improving family health and allowing for greater economic and educational opportunities for women and children.
Taking Stock
Are you a General Electric shareholder? Owners of General Electric (GE) stock annually receive proxy ballots in the mail asking for a vote on management’s position on a variety of business-related issues. This year, the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), a GE stockholder, and Environmental Advocates, NWF’s state affiliate, are urging GE shareholders to help protect wildlife and public health by voting in favor of a shareowner proposal called Report on PCB Cleanup Costs. This proposal urges GE to reveal its costs for the public relations, legal and lobbying campaign it waged to avoid cleaning up the Hudson River. Stockholders can vote by phone, Internet or mail. Votes must be cast before GE’s annual shareholder meeting on April 24 in Milwaukee. For more information, contact Julie Tanner at NWF, 202-797-6602, or visit www.eany.org.
Agents of Change
Recognizing those who make a difference
After more than two years with Environmental Advocates, Legislative Assistant Laura Cisco accepted a position with Assemblyman Vito Lopez, sponsor of the Brownfields Coalition bill, as a legislative aide. Laura has been responsible for EANY’s bill tracking system and memo process in addition to working as the organization’s administrative assistant. We wish Laura great success in her new position.
This spring, EANY has the help of three committed, bright and energetic seniors from the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA). Caitlin Driscoll, who interned with us before, has returned to assist with outreach and organizing for Earth Day Lobby Day. She is also working with the development team on fundraising. Caitlin is a history major who volunteered last year to work on the November gala. Tara McCarthy is working on sprawl and population issues, and helped with outreach for the February 4th Town Hall Meeting (see Bush Whacked, pg. 5). A double major in biology and women’s studies, Tara is very active on campus; she is captain of the Women’s Rugby Team, founder and president of the SUNYA chapter of VOX: Voices for Planned Parenthood, and a member of the Women’s Studies Teaching Collective. Working with Anne Reynolds on air and energy issues is Nicole Strippoli, a political science and history major. Nicole is president of Phi Alpha Delta, a pre-law fraternity, and hopes to start law school in the fall.
Sarah Gordon, a senior at Berne-Knox-Westerlo High School, interned from January to March as part of the Capital District New Visions Law and Government program. Sarah had been polling schools in the Capital region and Westchester County to determine their compliance with and experience implementing the new school notification provisions of the pesticide neighbor notification law. Sarah will be starting college in the fall.
Last fall, intern Allen Buchanan completed a project that will help make EANY’s publications more accessible on the Web. Allen converted each issue of Albany Report and The Green Sheet into HTML. The publications were previously available only as PDFs. Allen graduated from Bryant and Stratton Business Institute this past December with a degree in information technology. Thanks Allen, and congrats!
All of us at Environmental Advocates extend a warm welcome to the newest members of our Board of Directors: Kris Heinzelman, Christine Lehner, David Sampson, Arthur Savage and Edna Sussman. We thank them for their commitment to our organization and to furthering the cause of environmental protection in NYS. We also welcome Laura Haight of the New York Public Interest Research Group to the board of directors of our sister organization, EPL-Environmental Advocates. Laura formerly was assistant director of EA, before becoming NYPIRG’s environmental associate.
Earth Day Lobby Day 2002
Celebrate Earth Day this year in Albany with hundreds of citizen activists from across the state. Earth Day Lobby Day, featuring advocacy, education and a state Capitol rally, will take place on April 22. This year's issues will include energy conservation, Superfund/brownfields cleanups, genetically modified foods, healthy schools and open space funding.
This year, we will not be setting up appointments with every legislator. Instead, we will set up fewer lobby meetings and will concentrate on key legislators. If you wish to be part of a lobby team, please indicate this on the registration form. If you would like to lobby your own legislators, let us know who they are to see if they are included in our list. If not, feel free to set up your own appointment with them. For those who do not wish to lobby, there will be workshops in the afternoon.
Visit the Earth Day Lobby Day Website for more information and to register.