Lansing, gas, and money

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

Earlier this summer the Cayuga Power Plant in Lansing announced plans to repower at least one of its generating units using natural gas. Unsurprisingly, local environmental activists have come out in force against the plan. Some local politicians have come out in favor of the plan, claiming that natural gas is a cleaner option than the coal that the plant used to burn and that closing the plant would be a tax revenue loss for the Town of Lansing. Instead of building a pipeline to supply the plant with fracked natural gas from outside of New York, the plan is to truck in the natural gas from Pennsylvania. Before the plant can move forward with the transition the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation must accept its application as complete, evaluate it, and make a recommendation. At such time, a public comment period will start. When the public comment period is over and the DEC has reviewed a complete application it will rule to allow or deny the power plants plan to repower one of its turbines using natural gas. The proposal has found strong emotion on both sides, so what are some of the concerns around the plan?

 

Ed LaVigne, Town of Lansing Supervisor
Over the last several years the assessed value of the Cayuga Power Plant has dropped significantly. “They were at $60 million for the value and it dropped $25 million last year, and it will drop $10 million this year, it will drop $5 million more next year, so eventually it will be at $20 million,” LaVigne said of the plant’s rapidly decreasing value. Outside of the Village of Lansing, LaVigne said property taxes are around $30 for every $1,000 of assessed value.

“In other words, this is simple math, if you’ve got a $200,000 house your taxes will be $6,000,” LaVigne said. “Having said that, the tax impact of losing $25 million is basically $25,000 times 30, that’s $750,000 of tax revenue that the Town of Lansing will lose last year. This year, you add on the $10 million, that’s another $300,000.”

What frustrates LaVigne is that Lansing will be taking the majority of the tax impact. If other municipalities really want to see the plant shut down, LaVigne said the Town of Lansing is willing to talk about compensation.

“But when you look at the unfairness of this, if the other municipalities really want to have this thing go away, then I would be happy to accept any of their monetary donations to make up for it,” he argued.

LaVigne stressed that what he wants is reasonable and obtainable goals for everyone involved. Shutting down the plant, he argues, is not a reasonable or obtainable goal, but using natural gas as a transition fuel is. If natural gas isn’t the renewable energy that should be used, he said he would like to hear what should be used instead.

“We’re getting there,” he said of the technology advances in renewable energy. “My concern is we’re going too fast and we’re going to hurt too many people along the way and then who’s going to clean up that mess? That’s the part that upsets me, is that there’s no accountability from the people that want to drive this. That’s why if they want to shut the power plant down now and they want to basically subsidize the Town of Lansing for all our lost revenue, let the other towns kick in, absolutely!”

While he acknowledges that the increase in traffic that the power plant’s plan would bring, he argues that Lansing is an industry-heavy area that sees fluctuations in traffic all the time.
“It’s almost as though we’re grasping at reasons not to have this when we should have a reasonable adult discussion to say ‘Where are we going to be in 10 years? Where are we going to be in 15 years? How do we transition this?’ That to me is where that conversation ought to go,” LaVigne said.

 

Irene Weiser, Fossil Fuel Free Tompkins coordinator
This is not Weiser’s first fight with the Cayuga Operating Company. She’s been involved in several environmental actions contrary to the power plant’s plans. Last Tuesday she gave a presentation to the County Planning, Development, and Environmental Quality Committee about this very subject.

“I think the big twist in their application – surprising twist in their application -is to bring the gas in by trucks,” Weiser said. “There’s no question that the number of trucks that would be traveling to and from the plant would be disruptive to the quality of life to people who live along their routes, will cause wear and tear on our roads which ultimately comes out of taxpayer dollars to fix the roads, and potentially safety concerns.”

The truck traffic may or may not be reviewed by the DEC during the application review process. It is Weiser’s understanding that what the DEC will be looking for is whether or not the plant will be within air emissions standards with the transition to natural gas. If the DEC finds that the transition fits within the narrow scope of the evaluation it will give a recommendation of negative declaration, meaning there are no significant environmental impacts.

“It’s very rare for the DEC to issue a recommendation of negative declaration and then to dial it back,” Weiser said.

When it comes to the tax impact of the devaluation of the plant, Weiser said she doesn’t think there’s anything that will bring the valuation back to what it used to be. If the plant developed its acreage with solar and energy storage, Weiser sees the valuation going back up to around $100 million.

“I’m not here to say just shut the plant down,” Weiser said. “I’m saying, look for a better alternative. Look for an investment that’s not going to disrupt the quality of life for the people that live there, possibly put danger on the roads. Find an alternative that moves in the direction that the future needs to go.”

The costs from the loss of tax revenue pale in comparison to the impacts of climate change, Weiser argues. She also argues that the trucks have the potential to be a public safety issue for residents along the entire route.

 

Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering at Cornell University
Back in 2011, Ingraffea and two colleagues wrote a paper estimating the amount of methane that leaks into the atmosphere along the entire production chain of natural gas to be at least 3.5 percent, but few scientists were actually measuring it. In the years since then, dozens of studies have been done across the United States and internationally. Just a few months ago a summary of these new studies was published that estimated the mean value of leakage at around 2.5 percent. Methane, CH4, is around 100 times more potent over 10 years than the carbon dioxide produced by coal. Once in the atmosphere, both contribute to global warming. So, while burning natural gas releases less carbon dioxide by around half, Ingraffea argues that the release of methane that comes from natural gas negates the clean alternative arguments that proponents of the plan make it out to be.

“The politicians and the owners are saying ‘If we burn natural gas you only get half the greenhouse gas emissions,’ because they’re only considering CO2,” Ingraffea said. “But when you take into account CO2 plus methane the effect is you’re burning it twice, therefore no gain.”

What the recent study, from the Environmental Defense Fund, did consider is the breakeven point: the acceptable percentage of leakage that still results in an immediate benefit for plants that switch from coal to natural gas. The study estimated the breakeven point at 2.2 percent for an immediate benefit. But, policymakers do not use mean values to set policy, instead using a factor-of-safety value that can range higher or lower than the mean value. In this case, the upper limits of the factor-of-safety value in New York State policy is around 2.7 percent.

“If 2.7 percent leaks there’s no benefit for 17 years,” Ingraffea said, and he doesn’t think we have that long to start seriously addressing climate change. “You have to run the plant for 17 years before you can say ‘It’s better for the climate.’”

Following our conversation, Ingraffea found that the breakeven leak rate was updated to 2.06 percent. Following the updated curve, at 2.7 percent leakage, the breakeven point for the Cayuga Power Plant is not 17 years, it’s closer to 30.

The future is not in fossil fuels or the power plant, Ingraffea said, and it would be better to start preparing for the future now.

Request for comment to Jerry Goodenough, Vice President of Development at Heorot Power (a subsidiary of Beowulf Energy that owns the Cayuga Power Plant) was not returned. Request for Comment from Lansing Central School District Superintendent Chris Pettagrasso was not returned. Trucks carrying the natural gas from Pennsylvania to the plant have a high likelihood of passing the school district if taking Route 34B through the Town of Lansing.