EFSB grants more time for town
Energy facility board says town has more time to prepare impact statements on proposed plant
BURRILLVILLE – The state Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) Monday granted motions by the Town of Burrillville and Conservation Law Foundation to provide a 90-day extension to allow for additional discovery and to give their experts time to examine the impact and reason why Invenergy’s proposed 1,000- megawatt power plant’s two generating units were disqualified from an auction by Independent System Operator New England, which manages the regional power grid.
Earlier this month, ISO-NE, a neutral, non-profit organization that calculates the region’s energy needs for the future and helps determine whether additional suppliers are warranted in the marketplace, disqualified Invenergy’s planned Clear River Energy Center Unit 2 from offering into February’s capacity auction because of permitting delays resulting from local opposition to the natural gas-fired plant in Pascoag.
As a result, the EFSB on Monday agreed to not only grant a 90-day extension of the process, but also requested additional supplemental advisory opinions on the issue from the Office of Energy Resources and Statewide Planning.
The EFSB ruling will extend the start of the final hearings on Invenergy’s application. The hearings are slated to begin Dec. 8.
Meanwhile, Chicago-based Invenergy is pushing back the opening of the proposed power plant to 2021 because of permitting delays in connecting the facility to the electric grid.
At Monday’s EFSB hearing, lawyers for both the town and the CLF provided repeated examples of what they say are Invenergy’s misleading, non-transparent and delayed or incomplete releases of information. Burrillville Attorney Michael McElroy argued that Invenergy has been withholding information intentionally and is trying to prevent a public, transparent and complete licensing process.
“Our position that Invenergy has continued to make mistakes and shortchanged the process does seem to be resonating,” said Burrillville Town Manager Michael C. Wood. “However, if you want to potentially permit one of the largest projects in the state’s history, the process has to be clean, transparent and fully vetted. And that doesn’t appear to be the case at present.”
The EFSB Monday denied, however, motions by the Town of Burrillville and CLF to dismiss Invenergy’s application. Both EFSB Chairwoman Margaret Curran and member Janet Coit said the dismissal wasn’t appropriate. Coit stressed that issues of credibility are important to the board, saying the credibility of all the parties will be taken into account when it makes findings in the process.
McElroy disagreed, saying “This matter has been mishandled by Invenergy from day one. Enough is enough. The time is now to dismiss the application.”
A motion by the Tribal Council for the Narragansett Indian Tribe to intervene in the proceedings was also denied on Monday.
Meanwhile, Invenergy’s first choice for water is still the town of Johnston, which plans to resell the company water the town draws from the Providence Water Supply Board. Johnston inked that deal – $18 million for 20 years’ worth of water – in January, after the city of Woonsocket turned down the same offer.
That deal, however, is under attack by the town of Burrillville and the Conservation Law Foundation. They have filed suit in Superior Court to prevent Invenergy and Johnston from acting on it, citing a 1910 state law that supposedly limits the use of Providence water for “ordinary municipal uses.”
The plaintiffs contend that the resale of water for a fossil fuel-burning co-generation plant is not an ordinary municipal use, but Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein ruled some three weeks ago that he wants to hear arguments on the issue – a preliminary victory, at least, for Invenergy.
Most of the time, Invenergy says CREC will require about 15,000 gallons of water a day that can be delivered in two to three tanker trucks. The plant would fire on natural gas most of the time, but it could default to diesel fuel, in which case it would require substantially more water.