BY HUGH BAILEY
Hearst Connecticut Media
The operators of Bridgeport’s Harbor Station would like to make one point perfectly clear ”“ the coal-fired power plant in the city’s South End is not shutting down any time soon.
Public Service Enterprise Group has plans to add a natural-gas-fired facility to its waterfront property. But despite some apparent misconceptions around the city, that 450-megawatt plant would be in addition to, not a replacement for, the coal plant.
With its 450-foot red-and-white smokestack dominating the skyline, Harbor Station stands alone. Under increasing pressure from the neighborhood, environmental groups and national trends, the plant is by all appearances fighting history.
Only 3 percent of New England’s electricity is generated by coal, officials said, and the number continues to decline. Harbor Station can be offline for months at a time.
And pressure has been growing. The Bridgeport City Council recently passed a resolution, albeit nonbinding, calling on PSEG to “phase out the coal-fired electricity generation” and “to remediate the property for the next use.”
Its operators, though, are adamant. Thomas Copus, the station’s plant manager, said the facility will continue in operation for years into the future ”“ “for as long as it makes financial sense.”
The reason, he said, is about more than finances. Had it not been for the coal plant, Copus said, last winter’s deep freeze would have been even worse, because existing infrastructure is not up to the task of supplying the energy necessary to keep the lights on.
“It’s important to maintain fuel diversity,” he said. “Last winter, we ran for many months straight. The transmission system for natural gas is not big enough for New England’s demands.”
Green mayor
Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, who has made the environment a signature issue of his two terms in office, said his goal remains to end the use of coal.
“I look at these things from a long-term perspective,” he said. “When I grew up, Bridgeport had multiple coal plants operating 365 days a year. Now we’re down to one operating about 40 days a year.
“We’ve evolved in the right direction, but there’s still more work to do.”
While he supported the City Council’s resolution, he said energy policy is developed at a national level.
“Some people want to move faster, but there are a whole lot of buildings that need heat and electricity,” he said. “We need reliability, we need jobs and nobody wants a brownout in the middle of winter.”
On a recent tour of the coal plant sponsored by the Bridgeport Regional Business Council, Copus and other officials touted the facility’s benefits in terms of a secure energy supply, a source of well-paying jobs and as a benefactor for the community.
Finch called the company “enlightened,” highlighting its recent donation of solar panels for the roofs of two Bridgeport libraries.
PSEG also operates New Haven Harbor Station, and 118 people work between the two sites. The plant can supply power to 500,000 homes and pays about $2.5 million annually in personal property and real estate taxes. In 2012, the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued a new five-year permit for the facility.
Inside the plant
Harbor Station in places looks its 46 years. Equipment and infrastructure from the facility’s early days remain throughout the site, with more modern improvements not always as visible.
An enormous pile of low-sulfur coal ”“ some 210,000 tons, or a 32-day supply ”“ imported from Indonesia sits in the open air. New deliveries arrive every three weeks.
Despite coal’s diminishing stature, PSEG has invested heavily in the plant’s future, spending $150 million in 2008 to improve environmental performance, including particulate and mercury emissions controls.
New federal standards are to take effect next April, but the plant’s emissions are already below those measures, company officials said, and recent technological improvements will bring emissions down further.
The real trouble, supporters said, comes from elsewhere.
“Most of our emissions come from out of state,” said Jerry Clupper, executive director of the New Haven Manufacturers Association, who took part in the tour.
Connecticut joined other East Coast states in 1999 in filing suit against a number of Midwestern coal plants, eventually leading to plant closures and emissions-control technology installed at other sites.
Still, local emissions remain problematic, said Roger Reynolds, an attorney with the Connecticut Fund for the Environment. “It’s hard to tell the Midwest not to use coal when we’re still doing it ourselves,” he said.
“The neighborhood is remarkably overburdened, with high rates of asthma and other problems,” he said. “To be siting another plant there in addition to what’s already there is really discouraging.”
He said the benefits of cleaner-burning Indonesian coal may be overblown.
“Think of the carbon footprint involved in bringing it here, mining it on the other side of the world and then shipping it all the way here,” he said, adding that the state needs to be moving faster toward alternative energy sources.
Crowded neighborhood
Despite the presence of Seaside Park and the University of Bridgeport, Harbor Station’s South End neighborhood is dominated by the energy industry. In addition to the coal plant, there’s Bridgeport Energy LLC, owned by the Canadian company Emera, which has a 520-megawatt natural-gas-fired plant of its own next door. Less than 2 miles away is Wheelabrator’s trash-to-energy plant on Howard Avenue.
And now another power plant may be about to rise in a neighborhood already teeming with them. Depending on the results of a February bidding process run by the regional power distributor, ISO New England, work could begin next year on the site of four unused fuel-storage tanks on the waterfront. The new natural-gas plant could open by 2018.
In the neighborhood, opinions about the coal plant differ. Greg Breland, vice chairman of the South End Neighborhood Revitalization Zone, said the question of potential hazards from the plant needs to be addressed reasonably.
“I realize asthma is a serious problem, and am not trying to diminish it,” he said. “But what is causing it? We have the interstate going right through the South End.
“Instead of just accusing the power plant of causing problems, we need to find out where the problem is coming from in a more logical, reasonable way.”
Breland, who has lived on Myrtle Avenue since 2000, said the new natural gas plant would be welcomed. “Natural gas is a lot cleaner to burn, so it sounds like that would be a good step,” he said.
Effie Riddick, who lives on Main Street and also has been active on the NRZ, said she’s hoping for some changes. “We had thought that they were going to stop using the coal,” she said. “But we’re waiting to see what happens.”
She said she has had problems over the years dealing with pollutants. “Sometimes I notice when I go out of the house, I feel like my head just closes up,” she said, adding that she’s seen coal dust on her house.
Global worries
Stanley Heller is secretary of Promoting Enduring Peace, a national organization that has worked with Bridgeport residents in opposing the power plant. The West Haven resident said the plant is a concern far beyond the immediate neighborhood.
“The coal ash comes down on Bridgeport, but the pollution goes much further, to the east, toward Milford and West Haven,” he said. “It stays high up until it’s blown by the prevailing winds.”
And the concern goes far beyond the parochial. “It’s a matter of local and global pollution,” he said. “There are various substances that are causing bad health effects, from coal ash, particulate, sulfur dioxide and so on. There’s also the fact of the carbon dioxide that it spews out into the atmosphere.”
According to an article in Scientific American last year, the Bridgeport plant’s carbon dioxide emissions totaled 146,000 tons in 2012. As recently as 2005, its emissions were more than 3 million tons.
Coal-fired power plants are one of the nation’s largest contributors to global warming, experts have said, and even at its reduced workload, Harbor Station plays a role.
Heller said it may be some time before anything dramatic happens. “In the short run, I don’t see any big changes. But we saw an unexpected crowd in New York a few weeks ago where a few hundred thousand people showed up,” he said, referring to a Sept. 21 demonstration where protesters beseeched world leaders at the United Nations to take concrete steps to fight climate change.
“This is not a fringe issue, and not just for environmentalists,” he said. “People are getting it. They are realizing global warming is a danger to them.”
Hearst Connecticut Media includes four daily newspapers: Connecticut Post, Greenwich Time, The Advocate (Stamford) and The News Times (Danbury). See ctpost.com for more from this reporter.
