By Nathan Duke
Western Queens is estimated to produce 60 percent of the city's power and elected officials and borough residents have long fought to prevent further construction of power plants in Astoria and Long Island City. Elected officials have said the city's power grid is overstressed, citing last July's 10-day western Queens blackout, which left hundreds of thousands of people without power and caused businesses to lose thousands of dollars.The Council gave its full support on Jan. 3 to a bill which would require the city to undertake a study of all city-owned buildings with a 500-kilowatt or higher peak electricity to determine which ones can produce their own energy or use natural gas, Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria) said.”It would put less of a burden on the city's grid and there would be less of a need for new power plants,” he said. “We've already seen the results of a burdened grid here in Astoria.”Only buildings that are cleaner than a new, combined-cycle natural gas-fired central power plant will be considered, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan) said.”Anything we can do to decrease our reliance on the outdated, excessively polluting power plants in Queens is a step in the right direction,” state Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) said. “This is a problem across the state. For a decade, no modern plan has been formed to decrease on our reliance on foreign oil and polluting toxins.”Astoria's Charles Poletti Power Project, long deemed the city's worst polluter, recently underwent tests in which electricity at the plant was produced through the mixture of environmentally friendly oils. The city Power Authority launched a new power plant, which is adjacent to the Poletti plant and considered to be the most energy efficient facility ever built in the city, on Dec. 31, 2005 with the intention of closing down the Poletti plant permanently in 2010. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in June that the city's power needs would be met for at least four years and that the construction of new city power plants would be postponed until 2012.Reach reporter Nathan Duke by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 156.
