I.P. district updates residents on Barrett plant’s future

“They’re not going to repower that plant,” Island Park Schools Superintendent Dr. Rosmarie Bovino told a small group of residents at the district’s May 22 Board of Education meeting, referring to the Long Island Power Authority’s stance on modernizing the E.F. Barrett Power Station, which straddles Island Park and Oceanside. “They’re likening the plant to an American car that was built in the 1950s and is now being maintained in Cuba.”

School Board President Jack Vobis chimed in: “An American car in Cuba, which if you brought back to the United States, might be worth a significant amount,” he said, his voice trailing off as he smiled. He then grew serious. “We need to convince them that our classic car is worth some money, and they need to keep their investment in [it].”

The island country is known for its antique automobiles — still useful to Cuba’s cabbies and other drivers, much like the Barrett plant to Long Island’s power grid. That is why LIPA has said that the plant will continue to operate as it has, but unlike many Island Park residents and local officials, the agency believes that overhauling the facility is unwarranted.

After Island Park’s Students of the Month ceremony and Bovino’s tenured teacher selections, proud parents, spouses and relatives of those honored left Francis X. Hegarty Elementary School’s cafeteria. With about a dozen community members remaining, the schools’ attorney, Bob Cohen, gave an update on the Barrett plant and the district’s recent meeting with LIPA.

Nearly four years after National Grid proposed a repowering project to increase the plant’s efficiency and environmental friendliness, a report released by LIPA in April — conducted over three years by PSEG Long Island — stated that it would not make economic sense to rebuild the facility. The study cited a power capacity surplus until at least 2035, due in part to increased energy efficiency and a growth in renewable energy, as reasons not to do a large-scale plant renovation, a project that LIPA claims would cost more than $1.1 billion in its first 10 years of service, which would fall to its customers.

Similar studies included in April’s PSEG Long Island’s Integrated Resource Plan showed that repowering the Port Jefferson facility was not feasible, nor was moving forward with Caithness II, a proposed $2.9 billion plant in Yaphank.

LIPA is in the middle of tax grievance proceedings filed in 2010 against Nassau County, the Town of Huntington, the Village of Port Jefferson and the Town of Brookhaven — the tax jurisdictions for its four Long Island Lighting Company legacy power plants, including Barrett — saying that property taxes on the facilities are over-assessed by at least 90 percent.

Per year, LIPA now pays $36 million in property taxes, which represents about 49 percent of the school district’s tax base, Cohen explained. He and school officials have agreed that such a tax reduction, if granted to LIPA, would be “devastating,” as the lost revenue would have to be made up by homeowners.

But Cohen told residents that LIPA extended an informal proposal to lower the 90 percent tax reduction to 50 percent — to be implemented over an eight-year period — at his May 17 meeting with Tom Falcone, LIPA’s chief executive officer. “What it tells me is that the 90 percent was never something they really thought that they would ever get, and I think that’s the strategy [with] these tax certioraris,” Cohen said. “You ask for the moon, and you settle for something less.” He added that he, the village and the school board would not be rushing to decide on such a settlement anytime soon.

LIPA spokesman Sid Nathan declined to comment on the specifics of any potential settlements. “We’ve proposed fair and long-term solutions, and the host communities deserve taxes based on fair tax assessments,” he said. “Our other 1.1 million customers deserve to pay no more than their fair share of taxes for local government services.”

The district filed a lawsuit against LIPA and National Grid in 2015 in Nassau County Supreme Court, claiming they breached a promise made in the late-1990s not to bring any tax grievances unless the assessment increase was “egregious,” Cohen explained.

“This is a breach of a social contract that they have with this community,” Richard Schurin, an Island Park resident and Garden City attorney, said at the meeting, adding that other residents need to start speaking up. “We have a disgusting power plant that reduces our property values and presents environmental dangers to us, and the return on that is the tax benefit that we get as a result of that.

“… Port Jefferson is fighting it on that basis,” Schurin added, “and locally, people need to really be upset about it, and I don’t see that happening.”

Despite the support of local officials like Nassau County Legislator Denise Ford and State Sen. Todd Kaminsky for a repowering of Barrett to make the plant more environmentally friendly, school officials noted that the state’s Clean Energy Standard — designed to reduce air pollution and fight climate change — requires that 50 percent of New York’s electricity come from renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, by 2030.

Cohen said that LIPA mentioned at the meeting that it would consider adding more “flexible” energy to the site, including what it called peaking units on some of the plant’s available land in Island Park. Nathan said that LIPA has not committed to any measures yet.

“Politicians might have an agenda for clean energy … which would make it difficult for us to have to convince [the state] that we should be the exception to that rule,” Vobis said. “It’s not the 11th hour right now, but if it ever got to that point … we would need to make a case that this community is relying on the revenue from that power plant for the education of our children.”

The state Department of Public Service will hold two public statement hearings on June 21 — at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. — at the William H. Rogers Legislative Building in Smithtown, during which residents can comment on the future power forecast and the evaluation of alternative energy resources. Two more will be held at the same times on June 22 at the Theodore Roosevelt Executive & Legislative Building in Mineola.