Plant Foes Level Charge of 'Environmental Racism' During Hearing

More than a dozen speakers Thursday night urged officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection to deny permits being sought for the Newark Energy Center, a natural-gas power plant to be built in the East Ward.

“This is a dirty deal for dirty air that affects the lives and health of the people of Newark,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club and one of the state’s most prominent environmentalists. “DEP is permitting a health crisis by allowing more pollution into Newark and the Ironbound community.”

In May, the city’s planning board approved an application by Hess Corp. to build the 655-megawatt plant, which will be located on Hess property at Doremus Avenue and Delancy Street.  With that approval in place, the company must now receive three separate air-quality permits from the DEP. At Thursday night’s city hall hearing, members of the public were invited to comment and to submit written statements regarding the permits. Commenters will have their concerns addressed in writing by the DEP and will also be informed of the agency’s decision on the permits sometime in the next several weeks.

Hess representatives have said that the plant is expected to produce energy more cheaply than other, dirtier energy sources. Since electrical grid operators purchase the least expensive source of energy daily, the net result will be less pollution as the Hess plant “displaces” those other sources.

Speakers Thursday, however, dismissed those claims, saying they hinge on the price of natural gas, which could fluctuate significantly over the lifetime of the plant. Instead, said Nicky Sheats, director of the Center for the Urban Environment at Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, there’s no guarantee that there will be a net reduction in pollution.

Sheats and other speakers also said that Newark and the Ironbound already have very poor air quality, a condition that will be aggravated by the addition of another source of pollutants in the city. Sheats pointed to data showing that New Jersey communities with the worst air quality also tend to be low-income and with large minority populations.

“Pollution is correlated with both race and income,” Sheats said. “According to 2009 data, the amount of pollution is correlated with the percentage of people who are poor and are of color.”

Kim Gaddy, chair of the city’s environmental commission, pointed out that the city already contains or is close to significant sources of pollution, including an incinerator and a coal-fired power plant in Hudson County. Placing a power plant in Newark amounts to “environmental racism,” she said.

“The DEP has failed us over and over again. You allow everything in our community, but not in any other communities...No ethnic group should bear a disproportionate share of the effects of pollution,” Gaddy said. “You have never given us fair treatment in the city of Newark. You would rather see us die.”

Gaddy, Sheats and other speakers argued that if the plant has to be built, it should be placed somewhere with good air quality -- especially because the health of Newark residents is already being affected by particulates in the local air. Cynthia Mellon, of the Ironbound Community Corp., said 1 in 4 children in Newark suffer from asthma, versus a statewide average of 1 in 12.

Other speakers urged the DEP to  encourage the construction of renewable energy sources at the site, including solar panels, as well as a program to make Newark homes more energy efficient. Doing so would create more jobs than the 26 positions expected at the plant and would also help in the fight against global warming, said speaker Peter Montague.

Unless global warming is checked, “in 30 years the hot days are going to be 115 to 123 degrees in the summer. The city will be uninhabitable in the summer.”