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10/19/2017 CPV to test new plant in coming weeks

CPV to test new plant in coming weeks

By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record

Posted Oct18,2017at7:32PM
Updated Oct18,2017at7:32PM
MIDDLETOWN Operators of the $900 million Competitive Power Ventures plant being built in Wawayanda plan to
begin testing it by next month, using oil to run it while awaiting resolution of a conflict over a natural-gas pipeline that
would deliver the power stations primary fuel source.

Company representatives told the Times Herald-Record editorial board on Wednesday that they will notify residents
before starting the tests and may run the plant for a total of a couple hundred hours to complete that work. The plant is
about 85 percent done, and they said they hope to have it ready for use in the first quarter of 2018, whatever the status of
the regulatory dispute over the gas pipeline.

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10/19/2017 CPV to test new plant in coming weeks

For more than an hour, Thomas Rumsey, CPVs vice president of external and regulatory affairs, responded to the strong
citizen opposition that seems only to have mounted in the late stages of construction, and to related issues such as the arrest
last year of a former CPV executive and a former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo on bribery charges. He defended the
plant as an environmental benefit rather than a hazard, and touted the cheaper electricity and other economic gains he said
it would bring to the area.

Asked if opponents had legitimate concerns about air pollutants the plant will release, Rumsey said: If you lived outside the
plant for a full year, it equals about four hours of mowing your lawn. Thats the level of emissions that youre going to be
exposed to. So are they legitimate? Theyre legitimate questions; Im not saying theyre legitimate concerns.

Rumsey argued the 650-megawatt plant actually will reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by replacing power
generated by older plants that burn more fuel. Displacing less efficient generators, he said, also will mean less total natural-
gas use and therefore less fracking to extract that gas from underground shale a controversial drilling technique that
opponents have raised as one of their environmental objections.

So if youre concerned about fracking, and you want to do less of it, then modernize the grid, Rumsey said, adding later
that stopping the plant for environmental reasons is the same as keeping the status quo, which is higher emissions, more
imports from fracking, more methane.

The plant has been under construction since 2015 on a 122-acre property bordered by Routes 6 and 17M and Interstate 84.
CPV officials are still waiting for a 7.8-mile pipeline that would supply the power station with natural gas, and now face a
standoff between state and federal regulators about permits that Millennium Pipeline Co. needs to start work. The state
Department of Environmental Conservation denied those permits, and last week challenged a ruling by the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission that the denial came too late.

Protect Orange County and a coalition of other environmental groups opposed to the CPV plant filed a separate rehearing
request with FERC on Friday to support the DECs case. The DEC has asked FERC to withhold permission for the pipeline
work while the challenge is pending.

Rumsey said Wednesday that CPV officials must test the plant to join the power grid and start earning a small amount for
its capacity, even if its unlikely to generate and sell electricity until it has natural gas. He said the plant probably will
remain on standby until the pipeline is built, because the oil that serves as its secondary source normally would be too
expensive to use. Its allowed to run on oil for up to 720 hours, or 30 days, a year. Building the pipeline is expected to take
about four months.


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