COURIER L 12 IFE, FEBRUARY 4-10, 2022
Bklynites ask gov to deny
new Greenpoint vaporizers
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
With just over a week to go before
the state Department of Environmental
Conservation plans to issue its decision
on allowing the construction of
new fossil fuel infrastructure at the
Greenpoint Energy Center, Brooklyn
activists, neighbors, and elected offi -
cials gathered to ask Gov. Kathy Hochul
to put a stop to the project.
A year and a half ago, National
Grid, one of the city’s most prolifi c
energy companies, applied for less restrictive
state air pollution permits
— the last step in the agency’s bid to
build two new Liquifi ed Natural Gas
vaporizers at the massive campus.
The two new vaporizers would join
a fl eet of six 54-year-old vaporizers already
operating at the North Brooklyn
facility. Once approved and constructed,
National Grid has said that
the newer, more-effi cient vaporizers
would allow them to slowly phase out
two of the older mechanisms. After
several delays, DEC reps are expected
to issue their decision on Feb. 7.
Greenpointers who have spent
their lives beside the plant and lawmakers
say the vaporizers — no matter
how effi cient — are unnecessary,
harmful to the health of people and the
environment, and the detrimental to
the lofty goals for emissions reduction
set by the 2019 Climate Leadership and
Community Protection Act.
“National Grid has yet to show any
real need for these LNG vaporizers, but
still they charge ahead with more and
more investments in climate-killing
technology, instead of going to green
technology,” said US Rep. Carolyn Maloney.
“We are steps away from the Newtown
Creek, an EPA Superfund, looking
over at Cooper Park Houses and the
North Brooklyn communities that have
long been burdened with the toxic legacy
of our nation’s industrial past.”
Residents of Cooper Park Houses
and the surrounding communities
worry that exposure to the contaminated
air and ground in Greenpoint
has caused long-term health issues.
“Please, let’s not have this vaporizer
installed 1,000 yards away from
my community, our community, where
we live,” said Elisha Fye, president of
the Cooper Park Residents Council.
“We need to breathe clean air, we need
clean air in our lives.”
National Grid says the new vaporizers
are necessary to meet the needs
of the city on freezing days, though the
existing vaporizers have been used
sparingly in recent years, often only
powering on for a few days. They say
the new vaporizers will not increase
the capacity of LNG stored at the
Greenpoint Energy Center, but will
re-gasify what is already stored there
faster and more effi ciently.
Activists and climate scientists have
called into question National Grid’s assessment
Two large tanks at the Greenpoint Energy
Center supply liquifi ed natural gas to existing
vaporizers. Photo by Kirstyn Brendlen
of the environmental impact
of the project, and have criticized the
company and government agencies for
weighing the impact of the vaporizers
separately from both the rest of the existing
100-acre Energy Center and the
seven-mile natural gas pipeline the
company constructed in Brooklyn.
Last fall, the DEC denied permits
for natural gas plants in Newburgh
and Astoria because they did not comply
with emissions restrictions set by
the CLCPA and could not justify that
the need for the projects was great
enough to warrant approval. In December,
Eastern Generation voluntarily
scrapped their plans to build new
plants in Gowanus Bay in favor of developing
renewable energy technologies
instead, saying the permitting process
had already been too challenging.
“Governor Hochul has done the right
thing in Astoria, she has done the right
thing in Gowanus,” said local Councilmember
Lincoln Restler. “We need her
help here in Greenpoint. We should be
shuttering fossil fuel infrastructure, not
expanding it.”
If National Grid intends to operate
the new vaporizers for as long as
they’ve run the existing ones, they
will soon be violating the CLCPA,
said Lee Ziesche, an organizer with
the Sane Energy project, as New York
aims to reduce its fossil fuel reliance
almost entirely by 2050.
“These would defi nitely become
stranded assets,” she said.
On Jan. 26, lawyers representing
a group of community organizations
who last year fi led a civil complaint
alleging that National Grid, the DEC,
and the state’s Public Service Commission
had violated civil rights law sent a
new fi ling to the federal Department of
Transportation and the EPA, who are
investigating the claim.
The fi ling doubles down on the
groups’ request for DEC to rescind
their “negative declaration,” which
stated that the proposed vaporizers
would not have a negative environmental
impact, and calls for the department
to conduct a full environmental
review of the project before any
permits can be issued.
National Grid did not respond to a
request for comment.
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