FoodandWaterWatch.org is one of the organizations that are constantly in front of Governor Cuomo’s face (literally) as they seek to have him take every step possible to stop the use of fossil fuels. They have training and information meetings once a month on Thursday nights at the Society for Ethical Culture, 2 W 64th St, NYC. You can also jump straight into the fray by contacting them to volunteer thru their Facebook page Food & Water Watch – New York or on Twitter at @foodandwaterwatchnyc. They’re also around the country. These contacts will get you thru to the national or other regional and local groups as well.
‘Call Cuomo Mondays’: Anti-fracking forces push governor to shut down natural gas projects
Advocates on both sides of the years-long debate over natural-gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale had assumed it would be the courts — not the governor — that ultimately decided fracking’s fate in the Empire State. So far, they’ve been wrong. Jon Campbell / Albany Bureau
Veterans of the anti-fracking movement have reunited in an all-out effort to get Gov. Andrew Cuomo to rid the state of natural gas projects.
(Photo: Peter Carr/The Journal News)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Activists have made more than 7,000 calls to the governor’s office, opposing natural gas projects
- Natural gas remains the leading source of electricity in the state, while Cuomo tries to add more renewables to the state’s energy mix
- Cuomo faces a primary challenge from Cynthin Nixon, who wants the state to rely on renewables for all its energy needs by 2050
It’s known as “Call Cuomo Mondays.”
To kick off the week, activists from across the state phone the offices of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, urging him to take their side in opposing natural gas projects.
Each week another project is in the crosshairs. It could be a campaign to end what activists call “bomb trucks” used to transport natural gas across state roads. Or a push to prevent the Competitive Power Ventures natural gas plant from opening in Orange County.
The same tactic was deployed several years ago to nudge the governor toward a ban on fracking, the controversial technique used to release gas from underground shale formations using a mix of chemicals, water and sand. Cuomo’s decision to enact such a ban in December 2014, after years of debate and study, handed grassroots activists one of the biggest victories on the environmental front in decades.
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Buy PhotoA police officer tells anti-fracking activists to leave Mt. Kisco Presbyterian Church where NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo is voting in the Democratic primary on Sept. 9, 2014 (Photo: Carucha L. Meuse/The Journal News)Cuomo faces a similar challenge in this year’s primary. In April, his Democratic challenger, Cynthia Nixon, said she wanted the state to commit to renewables like solar and wind power for 100 percent of its energy needs by 2050.
At a campaign stop in Peekskill in July, Nixon said the AIM pipeline should have never been built. She was introduced by Courtney Williams, who heads SAPE (Stop the Algonquin Pipeline), a group that has staged protests outside Cuomo’s New Castle home.
Cuomo doesn’t have the power to shut the pipeline down. The project’s approvals come from the federal government. But in June, state officials sent a letter to federal officials urging them to reconsider the risks the project poses to public safety.
“Once again he’s feeling the heat from both sides and I think that is going to weigh heavily so I think as we approach the primary he is going to try to put it to rest,” Zaino said.
In recent weeks, Cuomo has pursued a number of measures that won praise from anti-natural gas groups.
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Earlier this month, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation denied an air-quality permit for Competitive Power Ventures’ CPV Valley Energy Center in Wawayanda, effectively putting its mid-August opening on hold while a legal battle unfolds.
The CPV plant on U.S. Route 6 in Wawayanda March, 15, 2018. JIM SABASTIAN/TIMES HERALD-RECORD (Photo: MUST CREDIT- Jim Sabastian/Times Herald-Record)“This is the kind of leadership we need as we march toward our renewable energy future,” Ramsay Adams, the executive director of Catskill Mountainkeeper said when the announcement was made.
The future of the 680-megawatt, $900 million plant became less certain after the 2016 arrest of Joseph Percoco, a former Cuomo aide and confidant from South Salem convicted in March of accepting more than $250,000 from CPV and another company seeking state business. Federal prosecutors say most of the payments came through a $90,000-a-year “low-show” job for Percoco’s wife.
The Percoco factor
The Cuomo Administration tried to get federal officials to reconsider a water quality certification permit for the Millennium Pipeline, which will deliver natural gas to CPV. But in April, a federal appeals court said the administration waited too long to mount the challenge.
Millennium spokeswoman Michelle Hook said the administration’s interest appeared to dovetail with the negative publicity generated by the Percoco arrest.
“The level of scrutiny that the projects received from the administration seemed to coincide with additional public attention the project received in the later years when the plant was almost complete and the pipeline was seeking permits,” Hook said.
Losing the power generated by CPV could impact the state’s energy grid in the years to come.
A 2017 report by the New York Independent System Operator, a non-profit that oversees the state’s energy grid, said CPV and two other natural gas plants — Cricket Valley Energy Center (1,020 megawatts) in Dover and the Bayonne Energy Center in New Jersey (120 megawatts) — will play a critical role in providing the state’s electricity when the Indian Point nuclear power plant shuts down in 2021.
Industry veterans say it could be years before renewables become a reliable source of energy. In the interim, natural gas will need to make stay in the mix, they say.
Gas leads the way
Natural gas remains the leading source of electric generation in New York with nearly 4,000 megawatt hours, followed by nuclear (3,418 MWh) and water-generated electricity (2,597 MWh), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Renewables account for about 580 MWh.
Cuomo wants to close that gap. He’s established a goal of relying on renewables for 50 percent of the state’s energy needs by 2030.
He‘s gotten behind a plan to generate 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind energy off the coast of Long Island that will deliver electricity to some 1.2 million households in Long Island and New York City by 2030. He’s vowed to shut down all the state’s coal-burning plants or convert them to cleaner fuel sources over the next two years.
And he’s directed state officials to study the costs and feasibility of having the state rely on renewables for 100 percent of its energy.
“Since taking office in 2011, Governor Cuomo has led the nation in combating climate change — from banning fracking to denying pipeline projects that harmed our natural resources to prohibiting all coal plants and enacting one of the most aggressive clean energy standards in the country,” Cuomo spokeswoman Abbey Collins said.
But activists question whether the governor’s public comments match his policy. “There’s a question of competence in the Cuomo administration at this point, whether they are seriously trying to stop these proposals or whether they are trying to make a show of it right before the primary,” said Pete Sikora, a director with New York Communities for Change in Brooklyn.
The Danskammer electric power plant in the Town of Newburgh, pictured here in 2004, used to be one of the states worst air polluters when it burned coal. Now, the plant is being restarted with much cleaner natural gas. This February, 2004 view of emissions from the Danskammer electric power plant, pictured, and the Roseton plant, not pictured, was taken from New Hamburg looking west across the Hudson River. The visible substance coming from the smokestacks is mostly steam, however the plants emitted 12 regulated toxic substances in 2001, totaling 1.8 million pounds, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most current data. Most of the regulated emissions, pound for pound, are in the form of hydrochloric acid and sulfuric acid. Other regulated toxic pollutants emitted include lead, mercury and other metals. The plants are the top air polluters in the mid-Hudson Valley. (Photo: File photo/Poughkeepsie Journal)Sikora’s group recently came out against a proposal to convert the Danskammer power plant in Newburgh into a 24-hour operation. The plant currently operates as a peak facility, filling in the gaps during periods of high demand.
A report released last week by the Buffalo-based watchdog group, Public Accountability Initiative, called the Danskammer proposal a “money grab by ultra-wealthy Wall Street investors” and urged Cuomo to oppose it.
Activists like Beauchamp say that with a Trump White House, Cuomo remains their best hope of eliminating natural gas from the state’s energy grid.
“The main lesson from the fracking campaign is that this governor responds to political power almost above anything else, above all this ideological stuff, so if you can show enough political power you can win,” Beauchamp said. “And the hope is that we do it again.”
Collins says Cuomo will continue to push for a cleaner energy grid in the face of opposition from Washington.
“Now we’re fighting the environment’s biggest enemy — President Donald Trump and we will do everything in our power to ensure the Trump Administration doesn’t undo all the success we’ve achieved in New York,” Collins said. “Advocates will advocate, but the governor will continue to lead the way in protecting our environment and creating a cleaner, greener New York for future generations.”
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