Peaking Plant
To ​“Green” Port

East Shore neighbors may breathe easier with the addition of new power turbines nearby, since a power company has agreed to fund measures to clean the air.

When New Jersey-based power company Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) last summer proposed to construct three natural gas-powered turbines and a 130-foot exhaust stack in the East Shore, neighbors rose up against the $135 million plan. After a series of meetings and input from the city and local environmental groups, PSEG agreed to fund a $500,000 project to offset the pollution generated by its new plant.

That money will help make New Haven’s one of the greenest ports in the country, said city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts.

Thursday night in City Hall, the Board of Aldermen’s City Services and Environmental Policy Committee heard how that money will be spent. The committee voted unanimously to approve the plan; it now goes before the full Board of Aldermen for a vote.

The committee heard Thursday from Smuts (at right in photo) and from Christine Eppstein Tang (center) and Giovanni Zinn (left) of City Hall’s Office of Sustainability.

The new turbines will be natural gas-powered ​“peaking” generators that kick in at times of high demand for energy.

State law required PSEG to discuss the plan with the city, Smuts said. That conversation was ​“unfruitful for a while,” then ​“turned into a very productive discussion,” he said.

The city’s position was that no net new emissions should result from the new plant, Smuts said. After consultation with the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and the Environmental Justice Network, PSEG was able to meet most of the city’s requirement, Smuts said. But cutting down on particulate matter (PM) was still difficult, he said. Hence, PSEG agreed to kick in $500,000 towards efforts to reduce PM.

Zinn, an environmental consultant to the Office of Sustainability, said that money will be spent in three ways. First, garbage trucks servicing the area will be retrofitted with diesel filters to reduce PM. ​“Refuse trucks spend 5,800 hours per year in the neighborhood,” Zinn said.

The filters will benefit the entire city, Smuts said. Since garbage trucks emit pollutants at ground level, their pollution has a much more immediate effect on neighbors than pollution coming from a tall smoke stack, Smuts said.

After garbage truck filters, the money will pay for similar filters on other equipment in the port district, including cranes, payloaders, and bulldozers, Zinn said.

Third, the money will pay for the installation of power outlets for tugboats docked in New Haven. That will allow tugs to avoid firing up their polluting diesel generators for the power they need while docked, Zinn said.

These improvements, along with the city’s new electrified truck stop, ​“will make us one of the greenest ports in the country,” Smuts said. ​“These changes will put us at the forefront of greening our port.”

New Haven has the second largest port by volume in New England, Smuts said.

Westville Alderman Greg Dildine said it sounds as though the city is trading a dirty new power plant for a cleaner port.

“This is a net win for the city,” Smuts said. The city will have less pollution with the plant than without it, thanks to the new pollution off-setting measures, he said.

It’s unusual to have environmental groups like Connecticut Fund for the Environment and the Environmental Justice Network supporting the construction of a new power plant, Smuts said. The environmentalist groups are doing so because of the net reduction of pollution, he said.

The power plant will also bring a ​“significant tax benefit for the city,” Smuts said.