By Dustin Brown
In the wake of a Manhattan transformer explosion Saturday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is calling for the construction of more power plants to boost the city’s supply of electricity, alarming borough leaders who contend Queens bears the brunt of the city’s electrical generation needs.
“We do not have enough power generation or distribution facilities and it is very difficult to site and to build those facilities,” Bloomberg was quoted as saying in The New York Times Monday in response to the power outage in Lower Manhattan caused by the explosion of a transformer at Con Edison’s East River Generation Station on 14th Street. “But if we don’t address those problems now, we are going to find ourselves down the road with more blackouts and shortages.”
State Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) agreed that transmission lines must be improved but expressed concern about the idea of expediting the process of building more power plants.
“I don’t disagree that over the long haul we’re going to need more generation, more plants,” said Gianaris, who has fought against the proliferation of power plants around Astoria. “But the way it currently works, all the plants get sited in the same neighborhoods… Throughout the process there is very little the community can do to have its voice heard.”
More than half of the city’s power supply is already produced in western Queens, an area that is also slated to receive a bulk of the new power plants proposed for construction in the city.
Two of the three city power plants already approved to be built in the city are in western Queens; of the three city applications pending approval, two are in Astoria.
But many of the projects now in the pipeline have been delayed because financing for construction is in short supply in the wake of the Enron scandal.
ConEdison spokeswoman Carol Conslato said “there is adequate but tight supply” of electricity this year but expressed concern that the construction of new sources of power is not keeping up with the rise in demand.
Gianaris said he is co-sponsoring a bill that would force the state Siting Board on Electric Generation to consider the cumulative impacts of pollution and spread the burden of power plants across different areas, instead of allowing them to be concentrated in one neighborhood The current legislation governing the siting of power plants, Article X, expires at the end of the year.
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
