Activists Criticize Plant Proposal

By Erik Holm - Staff Writer -  March 8, 2002

A coalition of environmental and energy-watchdog groups yesterday criticized a plan by the Long Island Power Authority to purchase KeySpan's Long Island power plants.

The power plants, said Gordian Raacke, executive director of the Citizens Advisory Panel, are "outdated and antiquated."

"These plants are 30, 40 and in same cases 50 years old and consist of antiquated, inefficient and polluting technology," Raacke said during a news conference in Mineola called by the newly formed Sustainable Energy Alliance. "Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on these antiques, we should be spending more on renewable-energy technologies and work to get these plants cleaned up."

LIPA Chairman Richard Kessel, however, said the power authority already was spending more than any other New York utility on renewable energy and insisted the power plants would be better off in LIPA's hands.

"Pushing for, and asking us to spend money on, renewable technologies does not replace the need for power on Long Island," Kessel said.

Under the terms of LIPA's takeover of the Long Island Lighting Co., it has a one-time option to buy KeySpan's power plants on Long Island at fair market value by May 27. The plants account for 92 percent of the generating capacity on Long Island.

Under the takeover agreement, LIPA must buy all the plants or none of them. Todd Stebbins of the New York Public Interest Research Group said yesterday that the all-or-nothing provision should be a deal breaker for LIPA.

"Some of these plants significantly contribute to poor air quality on Long Island," Stebbins said. "How are we going to clean up our air if these plants keep operating?"

But Kessel said the plants were more likely to be "repowered," or equipped with new, cleaner technology, if they were in LIPA's hands.

"If LIPA owned those plants, we would repower a number of them," Kessel said. "That's far more likely to happen under LIPA, because we could fund it with tax-exempt bonds," something that KeySpan, as a private company, does not qualify for.

LIPA has called a board meeting Tuesday to make a decision regarding the purchase of the power plants. The vote, originally planned for Feb. 28, was delayed when Kessel said he had received new information regarding the KeySpan plants.