Glenville, N.Y., Landowner Hopes to Pull Plug on Power Plant
Times Union, Albany, N.Y. --May 20
May 20--In a white cement building on Freemans Bridge Road in Glenville, near a hairdresser, an insurance agency and a company that installs wheelchair lifts in cars, lies an empty office.
Five years ago, the company proposed to build a power plant at the
Scotia-Glenville Industrial Park. Now, GEP has defaulted on $109,000 it owes to
the town of Glenville, and a landowner has filed a motion asking the state Board
on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment to finally pull the plug on
the troubled project.
"Their phones have been disconnected. Their office has been closed. They
obviously don't have the money to build this," said Daniel Hill, who filed
the motion last week. "I'm hoping the judge sees enough sense in it that he
says, 'You're right.'"
The $350 million plant was to produce 520 megawatts of electricity, or enough
to power more than 500,000 homes. It would have been constructed on a 22-acre
site just west of Scotia, a half mile from the Mohawk River.
But municipalities resisted the plan. In the summer of 2002, the village of
Scotia said it would not let GEP tie into its sewer lines. By autumn, Duke
Energy North America had withdrawn its financial backing. And by the end of
2002, the city of Schenectady had decided not to sell the company the water it
needed for the project.
In August, the company said it had a new "credible" source of
financing. But monthly updates filed with the two judges overseeing the
application process have not indicated any progress.
One of the judges, Daniel O'Connell, with the state Department of
Environmental Conservation, said GEP would have until May 25 to respond to
Hill's motion. After that, he and Michael Harrison, an administrative law judge
with the state Department of Public Service, will issue a ruling.
"A hearing is a possibility," O'Connell said. He has not received
anything from the company yet, he said Wednesday.
The project's principal, Thomas Macaulay, a former Vermont state senator, did
not respond to interview requests made through his attorney.
GEP filed its application for the power plant under a law known as Article
10, which was meant to fast-track power plant approvals so the state could meet
future power demands. The law expired in 2002, but GEP's application still is
pending. It must be revised because of the changes and limitations placed on
GEP's original plan.
Opponents tried to get the judges to dismiss the application last year when
the company missed a deadline for filing materials. The judges declined, but
said that even if GEP failed to provide the materials by April 2004, as it
projected, they planned to move ahead with an issues conference in the summer.
"The applicant hasn't done what they said they would," Hill said.
"It should be dismissed and the proceeding terminated."
Meanwhile, GEP had agreed to reimburse the town of Glenville for $109,000
spent on studies related to the plant. In October, the company signed a letter
acknowledging its debt, said town Supervisor Clarence Mosher.
"Well, one month went by, two months went by and they still didn't
pay," he said. "So we called them on it. We had a lawyer check on
their assets and they didn't have any assets."
The town worked out an agreement with Spectra Engineering P.C. to pay $90,000
of the money owed out of the town surplus.
"If we find that GEP has any assets, then we will try to recover our
(money)," Mosher said.
Hill, 43, lives in Schenectady and owns property less than a half mile from
the proposed plant site. He is the 12th generation in his family to own the
land, and has been hoping to build a home to replace a farmhouse that burned
down in the 1960s. The plant has held him up.
He filed the motion as an individual, though he is a member of Citizens
Advocating Responsible Development, a grass-roots organization that opposes the
plant.
"We love the motion," said Neil Turner, president of CARD.
"This whole thing is a bureaucratic nightmare to us. We'd like to drive a
stake through the heart of this thing. We can't get the state somehow to put an
end to it."
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