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Opponents of a power plant in a residential neighborhood of Rosebank are hoping that if two new plants are built on the West Shore, the Rosebank facility will lose business and be used less.
Though they concede that the chances are slim, residents and elected officials have a slight hope that the New York Power Authority's 47-megawatt gas turbine -- at the intersection of Lynhurst Avenue and Bay Street -- may be priced out by White Plains-based Fortistar.
Dan Nemeth, an Ormond Place resident who has fought against the plant since before it was built, suspects there would be less demand for the NYPA plant if two proposed plants are built by Fortistar in Travis and Chelsea.
"If the Rosebank plant would be used less and less, what would be the need to have it?" he asked.
Nemeth is one of many Rosebank residents, along with Staten Island politicians, who demanded the NYPA plant be shut down after revelations that it violated its emissions limits more than 300 times between January 2002 and March of this year.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) then entered into a consent order with NYPA, allowing higher emissions of nitrogen oxides, ammonia and carbon monoxide during startup and shutdown. The higher caps are the basis for a permit application to continue operating the plant through 2009.
DEC is expected to announce its decision after the new year.
"Would we like to see the plant used less? Yeah," Nemeth said. "But we want the plant gone."
City Councilman Michael McMahon (D-North Shore), who has opposed the Rosebank plant since it began operating in the fall of 2001, also hopes the facility will operate less if the two West Shore plants go online.
"I share that same hope and dream," he said. "I'm all for it and it's a possibility. But I am very pessimistic."
McMahon -- who called the construction of a power plant near a residential area of Rosebank "lunacy" -- said he supports the Travis plants as long as they "are reasonable in scale and have every emissions control equipment know to man."
"It certainly makes more sense than having a plant in Rosebank," he said.
Peter Barden, an NYPA spokesman, said that since the West Shore plants would be connected with a different substation than the facility in Rosebank and since they are within different "electric load pockets," it would be "extremely unlikely the Fortistar plants would displace the NYPA plant."
Ken Klapp, a spokesman for the Independent System Operator, said that power plants built in recent years -- including the Rosebank turbine -- generally are more economical and pollute less than older power plants in the area.
"That's why [it's] still being selected in the daily market," Klapp said, but wouldn't comment on whether or not the NYPA plant could be used less if Fortistar builds two new plants. "It would depend on where they are in the price list."
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