By: Scott Brinton
Jane Glider of Merrick smelled it as she sat watching her son's Little League game at Merrick Road Park last week.
"It was so overwhelmingly bad that people were sitting there with their hands over their faces," Glider said.
The next day, June 20, at her daughter's first-grade picnic at Birch Elementary School on Rugby Road, she smelled it again.
"The whole time [children] were outside playing, the smell was very strong," she said.
Glider worries for her kids -- Max, 10, and Kate, 7 -- because she realizes the smell was diesel exhaust from Freeport Village's Power Plant No. 2, which sits on the west side of the Meadowbrook Parkway, just south of Exit M9.
The California Air Resources Board lists diesel exhaust as a known carcinogen, meaning that it causes cancer, and a host of federal agencies call it a probable carcinogen.
Numerous Merrick residents said Freeport ran Plant No. 2 Sunday through Thursday last week, after 200 to 300 people from across the South Shore staged a rally against the plant June 16.
The residents said they fear that last week was a prelude to a summer that again will see their neighborhoods filled with diesel exhaust from the plant.
Joseph Kralovich, the rally's chief organizer, announced during the protest that the state Department of Environmental Conservation would rewrite Freeport Electric's Title V permit to run the plant to include emissions standards and monitoring requirements. It contains none now.
Kralovich believes the new, more stringent permit will force Freeport to close the plant or add pollution controls there. The plant, which opened in 1970, has no controls now.
The trouble is that all this won't happen until next year, at the earliest. That means the plant will run throughout the summer, unless Gov. Pataki shuts it down by executive order. According to the Clean Air Act and state Environmental Law, the governor can close the plant if it is deemed a danger to public health, said Keri Powell, staff attorney for the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Now, Kralovich, of Merrick, is calling on the governor to do just that, at least until the plant's revised permit takes effect. He wants to begin a letter-writing campaign among area residents calling on Pataki to act.
The DEC says standards for particulates (soot) and nitrogen of oxides must be included in the plant's Title V permit. Kralovich has said for months that the plant fails to meet federally enforceable limits for both, and he believes the DEC now realizes the same. So, he wonders why the agency doesn't conduct a stack test and have the plant cleaned up immediately.
"If they know or suspect that it's not running the right way, what's the problem? Have a stack test," he said.
"Why does this have to be a protracted process? Why, when we all know what the problem is?"
Vincent Greco of Freeport serves with Kralovich as co-chairman of CHOKE (Coalition Helping to Organize a Cleaner Environment) that formed recently to fight Plant No. 2.
In a recent letter, Greco, who has sought for 30 years to close the plant, pleaded his case to Pataki. "Your honor, where do we fit into this picture? Don't we have any place in your concern for New Yorkers?" he wrote.
"It certainly appears that we are at the bottom of the list or not even on it, when a problem like this, which can be easily remedied, persists this long. The DEC shows more consideration for the operator [Freeport Electric] than the residents' environmental health."
A June 1 letter from the EPA to the DEC outlines the state's timetable to rewrite Plant No. 2's permit.
According to the EPA, the DEC has 180 days, or six months, after the permit is reissued to conduct a stack test. The permit should be reissued within one to two months, knowledgeable sources say.
A stack test would probe the plant's smokestacks for emissions beyond allowable limits. According to records, the plant has not had such a test since the mid-1970s.
After the plant's coming stack test, the DEC must conduct tests every 2,000 hours, or a total of 83 days that the plant operates.
Freeport must clean up the plant's emissions if they fall outside accepted limits. Possible clean-up scenarios include installing pollution controls, or shutting down the plant and building a cleaner-burning, gas-fired model in its place.
Meantime, South Shore residents must live with diesel exhaust from the plant, as Freeport Mayor William Glacken refuses to cease operations there.
"There are no quick fixes or easy solutions to the problem, and even if there were one at hand, it would take two to three years to implement. In the interim, generation at Plant No. 2 will continue on an as-needed basis," the mayor said in a prepared statement after the protest march.
Kate Glider, Jane Glider's daughter, said the exhaust "smelled like garbage" during her first-grade picnic at Birch.
Her father, Mitch Glider, 40, an audio-technician, said of the exhaust: "I've often thought it was swamp gas."
Richard Ross, 46, a medical supplies salesman, said, "It's an acerbic, oppressive type of smell. I grew up in the city, and I never smelled it until I came here" to Merrick.
Terese Steffen is a mother of two, ages 7 and 5, who also attended the Birch picnic. "It smelled like trucks, it smelled like a highway," she said.
Steffen said, "I love it here, I really do. It's just that one thing."
Photo caption #500 and 501:
Photo credit: Scott Brinton/Herald
An electric substation that Freeport Village built on Sunrise Highway in 1996 enables the municipality to meet its power needs with imported electricity from the New York Power Authority upstate. The village, however, cannot count electricity from upstate toward state regulations that require Long Island utilities to maintain 98 percent of their "installed capacity" on the Island. Installed capacity is a power-industry term for ability to generate. In this case, Freeport must maintain enough installed capacity to meet its "peak load"; that is, the most electricity it will need in a given hour during the year, plus 18 percent of that figure.
Organizing meeting
The Old Lindenmere Civic Association is planning its next protest against Freeport's diesel Power Plant No. 2. Another organizing meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 28, at the Merrick Public Library on Merrick Avenue.
The association has invited Freeport Mayor William Glacken to attend the session.
"We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to express your views and position on Power Plant No. 2. Since we are neighbors, live next to each other, breathe the same air, and have common commercial ties, you can see why it is important that a dialogue become initiated," Bob Young of the Old Lindenmere association wrote to the mayor on June 23.
To generate or not to generate?
State: Freeport doesn't have to run Plant No. 2 to meet regulations
By Scott Brinton
Several questions are swirling around statements issued by Freeport Mayor William Glacken after a June 16 protest march against the village's diesel power plant No. 2.
For starters, Glacken said in a written statement to the media that the plant could not be shut down. Protesters said they want the plant "cleaned up or closed down" because of the cancer and asthma risks it poses.
Closing the plant isn't an option, Glacken wrote, because "Freeport's Electric Utility could be fined a total amount of $6 million over three years due to ISO regulations, which require power plants that have the capacity to generate electricity, to do so when needed."
The ISO, or Independent Service Operator, is a non-profit regulatory agency formed in 1999 to manage New York's power grid under deregulation.
Hubert Bianco, Freeport Electric superintendent, is reported to have said the state also requires Freeport to provide electricity to other utilities, including the Long Island Power Authority, if they need it and the village can generate it.
But according to Kenneth Klapp, ISO spokesman, there is no regulation that requires the plant to run, including to meet other utilities' needs. "They don't have to use that generator," he said.
Potentially, the village could reach an "installed-capacity agreement" with another utility. Installed capacity is a power-industry term for electric-generation capability. If the village had more generation ability than it needs, it could enter an installed-capacity agreement. In that case, it would be required to generate when called on by whomever officials agreed to provide electricity. In return, the village would be paid a yearly fee. In New York City, the retainer is $105,000 per megawatt of capacity per year, according to a recent New York Times article. Prices, though, vary throughout the state.
Village officials did not return phone calls to say whether they have an installed-capacity agreement with another utility. Richard Kessel, Long Island Power Authority chairman, said the village does not have one with LIPA. "They're not obligated to sell to us," Kessel said, adding that LIPA hasn't purchased electricity from Freeport since 1999.
What state regulations require is that Freeport maintains enough installed capacity, electric-generation capability, to avoid a power shortage. The state also requires that Freeport maintains the ability to generate 18 percent more electricity than its "peak-load capacity"; that is, the most electricity it will need in an hour on a given day during the year, usually the hottest day of the summer.
According to a regulation developed by the ISO and the state Energy Reliability Council, Long Island utilities must maintain 98 percent of their installed capacity here on the Island. It's called the "locational requirement," which went into effect after 1999 because regulators believed electric-transmission lines into Long Island were unreliable.
Simply because Freeport must maintain installed capacity on the Island doesn't mean it must generate here, state officials noted. It can, for example, import electricity to meet its needs. And, according to Freeport Electric's Web site, "About us?", that's exactly what it does.
In fact, according to the site, a substation that the village built on Sunrise Highway enables Freeport to import more than enough electricity to meet its needs. The station is rated at 84 megawatts and is expandable to 138 megawatts; the village's peak-load capacity is 53 megawatts, the site says.
The site also says, "Until the new substation was energized in 1996, the Utility [Freeport Electric] needed generation to meet its energy requirements on a daily basis. Even so, generation only provided 10 percent of the utility's needs. The bulk of the utility's energy requirements were met with hydro-power purchased from the New York Power Authority, as long as it can be purchased and transported for less money per kilowatt-hour than generation.
"Freeport Electric's energy costs are the lowest on Long Island."
The village's average retail rate is 6.7 cents per kilowatt-hour, half that of the typical LIPA customer.
Subhead: Does Freeport meet state regulations?
Another question: Does Freeport maintain enough installed capacity, generation ability, to meet state regulations?
Klapp declined to comment about Freeport specifically, saying any deficiencies in a municipality's system are confidential. He said, though, that if the village's peak load is 53 megawatts (according to its Web site), it must have 18 percent above that figure available on call. Ninety-eight percent of that amount must be located on Long Island. To meet state rules, it would then have to keep 62.5 megawatts of power available, with 61.25 megawatts located on the Island.
According to Freeport Electric's Web site, its installed capacity is 84 megawatts. However, those megawatts don't represent the village's ability to generate electricity in the village, but rather to import it off the grid at the Sunrise Highway substation.
The village's most-recent annual report to the state Public Service Commission says Freeport imported roughly 227,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity from the New York Power Authority upstate from March 1999 through February 2000, for $5.7 million.
State regulations, however, say the village cannot count the electricity it imports from upstate via the substation toward its installed-capacity requirements.
According to Freeport Electric's Web site, the village has 14.4 megawatts of electric-generation capacity available at Power Plant No. 1 on Sunrise Highway and 37.2 at Plant No. 2, for a total of 51.8 megawatts. That would put the village about 11 megawatts below what state regulations require.
If Freeport doesn't have enough installed capacity in the village, it must look to another Long Island generator to make up the difference through an installed-capacity agreement, Klapp said. He could not say whether the village has one. Village officials did not return phone calls from the Herald.
From March 1999 to February 2000, the village purchased almost 45,000 kilowatt-hours from the Long Island Power Authority for $1.95 million. But LIPA Chairman Kessel said he did not know of an installed-capacity agreement that would allow the village to buy electricity from the Long Island Power Authority.
Klapp also noted that installed-capacity requirements for utilities like Freeport should only rise in the future, as the new, high-technology economy gobbles greater amounts of electricity. Electric needs throughout Long Island are expected to rise 3 percent annually, he said.
