Melinda Tuhus Photo
Pollution from stationary cranes and ships idling in New Haven Harbor helps keep the city’s air the dirtiest in the state. With money from the builder of a new power plant, activists say they have a way to clean some of it.
The money — $500,000 — is coming from a company called PSEG Fossil LLC.
PSEG agreed to give the money as part of an agreement allowing it to build three small peaking power plants by the old harbor plant.
Members of the East Shore Management Team and the New Haven Environmental Justice Network brainstormed in long hours of meetings to come up with several proposals for how to start cleaning. And while solar power, wind power, and tree-planting were all suggested, the two top finalists will deal directly with reducing particulate matter (PM) emissions.
“Our primary concern was addressing air quality impact on areas most affected by the power plant — the Annex, East Shore and parts of Fair Haven,” said Nathalie Alegre (pictured), co-chair of the New Haven Environmental Justice Network. She added neighbors are especially concerned with particulate matter emissions, which can trigger asthma: “New Haven has the highest asthma rate in the state and is the main reason our children miss school.”
So after a final meeting on Wednesday night, followed by final consultation with city officials, Alegre said in a phone interview Friday morning, “We want to use a majority of the money, close to $320,000, for air quality-related improvements of the port — electrifying port piers to provide shore power so boats can plug into the grid instead of having to idle as they wait at the terminals. Also we included retrofitting stationary diesel equipment with particulate filters.” She added that the groups who worked on developing the priorities would like some kind of public-private partnership with operators of the port.
The second priority is spending $140,000 to retrofit six garbage trucks, which will be part of the fleet for another ten years, and which currently do not have the same air pollution controls as many other city vehicles. “This will help because the trucks go in such close proximity to houses,” spewing pollution that can have a more detrimental impact than more distant, more dispersed sources of pollution, Alegre said.
Alegre added that the group decided to allocate $40,000 for smaller projects, such as asthma education and prevention in the affected area; a toxics inventory of the area to better monitor and enforce air quality; and support for projects proposed by residents of the affected area from the Green Fund, an existing environmentally themed pot of money.
She said the process with the city was collaborative. Before Wednesday’s meeting, city staffers had provided an analysis of both cost and emissions reductions for the various options, as well as time frames for completion, once the funding from PSEG is in hand. They range from four months for retrofitting the garbage trucks to 18 months for installing power at the port.
“I need to make sure the area elected officials agree with the recommendations, then we need to meet with PSEG and make sure they agree,” city Chief Administrative Officer Rob Smuts wrote in an email message. “After that [which won’t take too long], we need to do the work. On some — the garbage truck retro-fits — it probably won’t take too long, maybe a couple months, but on some there is a fair amount of leg work that will need to happen before we do any equipment installation. We don’t own the port, so we’ll be working with independent operators trying to get measurements of use, match control equipment with different machinery, etc. That could take considerably longer.”
When he appeared at a tree-planting event in the East Shore on Friday, PSEG President Richard Lopriore was asked when the half-million might be forthcoming. “It’s already budgeted and will be provided when we get the air permit [for the project], around November” of this year, he replied.
It may be counterintuitive to some, but asthma is related more to violent crime than pollution. Environmental stresses are the main causes of asthma and also limit families' abilities to get out, seek treatment and respond. Crime also curtails local job opportunities that can enable communities to secure good family incomes, which also helps fight sickness.
If you want to maximize dollar impact, how about using the money for developing communities that can fight crime and other causes of stress (noise, traffic, litter), instead of spending it on more heavy equipment that the industries should be required to provide anyways? Areas like Fair Haven have been desperate for things like better street lighting, streets that are possible to walk and bike on, better child care, attractive bus shelters, trash receptacles and graffiti removal services - I'm not sure how providing a few more expensive pieces of equipment will help when you have 100,000+ vehicles passing through the area every day on I-95.