Can Hurricane Sandy Shed Light on Curbing Power Outages?

Marianne Lavelle

For National Geographic News

Published November 2, 2012

As Hurricane Sandy churned north and west over the Atlantic Ocean on its inexorable collision course with the U.S. East Coast, miles-long convoys of bucket trucks, aka cherry pickers, were already rumbling over interstate highways toward the anticipated strike zone, from as far away as Alabama and Texas.

It was well understood that the superstorm's harm would reach far beyond whatever wreckage it left in its path. Sandy's impact would spread far, wide, and quickly through the electric power grid—a vital lifeline that underpins every aspect of modern life, but one that is easily severed by falling trees and saltwater. Even before the storm hit, East Coast utilities summoned bucket trucks and work crews from the South and West, so they would be on hand to help repair downed power lines.

"It is virtually impossible to protect the system from a storm like Sandy," said Clark Gellings, a fellow at the industry's Electric Power Research Institute. Instead, he said, the industry focuses on a more achievable goal: "Can we do a better job at putting it all back together?"

By one measure, they did: Bucket-truck brigades enabled utilities to rapidly restore electricity to a large share of the 8.5 million homes and businesses in 16 states that lost power at the height of the storm.

Yet as of Friday morning, there were still nearly 3 million customers in New Jersey and New York without power, and 700,000 more in 11 states from Massachusetts to Virginia and as far west as Michigan.  New Yorkers were crowding Manhattan coffee shops to cop electric charges for their cell phones. New Jerseyites queued with red canisters outside gas stations to get fuel for their home generators—but gas was short too, in part because there was no electricity to power the pumps . Consolidated Edison, the New York utility that was dealing with the largest disruption in its history, was hoping to get the lights back on in Lower Manhattan by Saturday. That was a revised goal, after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared Con Ed's original timetable of two weeks "unacceptable."

On Thursday, as the U.S. Air Force began airlifting more utility trucks from California to New York, others too were questioning whether the bucket-brigade strategy was good enough. Many energy industry experts were viewing Sandy as a wake-up call: proof of the need for massive investment to make the electric power grid more resilient against such a disaster. Massoud Amin, director of the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota and a pioneer in grid research, notes that the East Coast power infrastructure is among the oldest in the nation. "That aging infrastructure is a marvel of 20th-century engineering," he said. "The question is how do we upgrade it for the 21st century?" 

Large Blessings, Small Margins

The electric system could count some successes in the wake of Sandy. Thirty-four nuclear power plants—one-third of the U.S. total—lay in the massive hurricane's path, and there were no meltdowns or other disasters.  The hurricane's landfall at Atlantic City was just 40 miles south of the nation's oldest nuclear power plant, Oyster Creek Generating Station; although the plant was offline for refueling, loss of power and flooding was a concern because of the need to keep the radioactive nuclear fuel from overheating. Oyster Creek shares the same design as Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant, which suffered a catastrophic meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. 

At Oyster Creek that didn't happen. The plant declared an "alert" for 36 hours when winds and heavy rains generated tides 6.8 feet above mean sea level at its water intake on the Forked River. But the water never rose high enough to impact the operation of plant equipment. When the electricity from the New Jersey grid went out, two locomotive-sized backup diesel generators started automatically and continued to power the crucial pumps that circulate cooling fluid through the reactor and the pool where spent fuel rods are stored. Cooling systems also continued to function at all three other nuclear reactors that experienced shutdowns—Indian Point and Nine Mile Point in New York, and Salem in New Jersey.

"This isn't the first time our plants have been through conditions like this," said Tom Kauffman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. "We practice regularly and are continuously prepared."

Earlier this year, however, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered the industry to reassess both its flooding and seismic risks, in light of the Fukushima accident. David Lochbaum, director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Sandy underscores the wisdom of that decision.

"The Fukushima plant wasn't of appreciably lower quality or poorly constructed compared to the U.S. plants," Lochbaum said. "It was given a much more severe challenge. None of our reactors would have survived that either." If the water had risen another 21 inches at Oyster Creek, the plant's service pumps might have been submerged, according to NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. That would have increased the risk of a loss-of-coolant disaster, although the plant had a back-up pump and the option of hosing the spent fuel with fire suppression system. In any case, it would be days until the cooling water would have been lost through evaporation.

Winds Versus Floods

In New York too, Hurricane Sandy drove home the point that the old benchmarks of risk might no longer apply. In one of the most dramatic videos captured the night the storm hit, a fireball burst over Manhattan's East Village when saltwater surged into one of Con Ed's substations. (Watch video below:)New York had never seen floodwaters higher than the 11-foot storm surge triggered by a hurricane in 1821. Con Ed had designed underground equipment at its voltage switching station to withstand a storm surge of 12.5 feet. But Sandy's waters reached 14 feet, flooding all of Lower Manhattan—and blowing up the substation. "Water and electricity don't mix, especially if you put salt in the water," said Gellings of EPRI.

Con Ed operates the world's largest underground electric distribution system, serving more than 3.3 million customers in New York City and neighboring Westchester County; more than 86 percent of its system is buried, including 94,000 miles of electric cables. Yet Sandy knocked out service to more than 900,000 of its customers.

Often, after storms that down overhead lines and cause widespread blackouts, public criticism of electric power companies centers around their resistance to making the investment in burying lines and other infrastructure to keep it safe from the wind. The damage that Sandy did to Con Ed proves that burying the systems is no fail-safe. To restore service, the utility is now pumping massive amounts of water out of the facilities, cleaning seawater from components, and drying, repairing, replacing, and inspecting equipment.

Though saltwater can be as damaging as wind, it may in the long run be easier to protect against. "You can make watertight compartments for the stuff that's underground," said Jeffrey Dagle, chief electrical engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "It's all a matter of money." To make such investments, utilities in the United States would need to gain approval from state regulators whose job is to keep unnecessary costs from being passed along to customers. But Sandy might change the perception of what's necessary. "The process of managing risk is informed by past events," said Dagle. "If something has never happened before, it's hard to convince regulators to fund a project to prevent it from happening. If Con Ed went to the regulators next week, it might be a different story."

Smart as Well as Tough

But many industry observers stress the electric power system needs more than stronger defenses—it needs to be smarter. "Smart meters," touted for their ability to help consumers monitor and curb their energy use, also allow utilities to pinpoint accurately where outages occur and respond quickly.

"Many people don't realize this, but not too long ago, the only way a utility knew there was an outage was if a customer called," said Gary Racliffe of ABB, a major supplier of smart-grid equipment to utilities in North America and elsewhere. An industry survey done last May found that one third of U.S. households, 36 million in all, have had smart meters installed. Unfortunately none were in the service areas of the major New York or New Jersey utilities. Smart meters are expected to be in half of all American homes by 2015.

But utilities will probably invest even more heavily in the coming years on smart systems to automate and modernize the distribution of electricity. One example is "self-healing" systems that can automatically detect a fault on the grid—say, when a tree falls on a power line—interrupt and isolate that fault within milliseconds, then reroute the power to an adjacent feeder line. While homes adjacent to the downed tree might have no power until the crew comes to remove it, most of the customers on the line have their power restored within minutes.

Amin argues that the U.S. power industry, in partnership with the government, should be making an investment of about $30 billion a year over the next 20 years to upgrade distribution systems. (Con Ed has been using $136 million in federal stimulus money for that purpose.) Not only would new technology make power systems more resilient to storms, but it also would make them more efficient and more able to integrate energy from renewable sources such as the wind and the sun. Smart-grid technology, Amin estimates, could reduce the costs of outages by about $49 billion per year, and by reducing energy use, save customers $20.4 billion a year. "The costs of upgrading are far below the benefits we get," he said. 

Like everyone else, Amin marveled at the reports of far-flung utility crews headed to the East Coast to help respond to Hurricane Sandy. "My hat goes off to them," he said. "But we can lessen the stress on them if we deploy a public-private partnership to make a smarter, stronger, more resilient grid and infrastructure. Not only can we do this, I am convinced we must do this. Secure and reliable operation of these networks is fundamental to national and international economy, security, and quality of life." 

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2012/11/121102-hurricane-sandy-power-outages/

After Hurricane, Some Begin To Question Wisdom of Rockaway Pipeline Project

Monday, December 03, 2012  | by Sarah Crean

Gotham Gazette

NEW YORK — Now that the construction of a new chain of natural gas pipelines running from the Rockaway peninsula to Brooklyn has been delayed following Superstorm Sandy, residents and elected officials are beginning to question whether the project is safe to build at all.

The exceedingly complex project would be constructed in separate phases — under the regulation of federal, state and local authorities — adjacent to coastal communities that were among the hardest hit during the storm.

U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, who represents central Brooklyn, told Gotham Gazette in an emailed statement that the destruction caused by Sandy had raised concerns among residents who live near the proposed gas pipeline project.

"Our need for independent energy cannot precede the safety of our community and environment," she said.

State Sen. Joseph Addabbo, whose new district includes the Rockaways, said he would organize a town hall meeting where residents could ask their questions about the project.

"Doing this simultaneously with Sandy becomes a daunting task," he said of the project. "People are trying to get their lives back."

He added that residents have come to him with some hard questions about the project. “This is a major endeavor," he continued. "What is the protection from a gas leak? What are the precautions? What is the time frame?”

National Grid spokeswoman Karen Young told Gotham Gazette that the storm had not affected phase one of the project — the utility’s plans to construct two gas pipelines underneath Jamaica Bay’s Rockaway Inlet. She added that they were "still meeting with all of the officials and agencies to determine the best time.”

A Nov. 21 project report filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by Oklahoma-based Williams Companies, which is also constructing sections of the pipeline, stated: “Construction originally planned for December 2012 is currently scheduled to begin in February 2013.”

Williams spokesman Chris Stockton said on Friday: “We’re still moving forward with our project. The hurricane has not changed our plans, nor has it changed the need for this project and the gas for the city." But, referring to the fact that Williams’ portion of the project had not yet received the necessary approvals, he added that there was "still a long way to go.”

Asked whether additional precautions needed to be taken during pipeline construction, Young said: “We had a robust plan in place, and the measures that we are planning to implement are above and beyond industry standards”.

She added that the pipeline had been designed to withstand flooding, would be buried underneath the seabed of Jamaica Bay and regularly monitored and inspected, especially during severe weather events.

Young stated that National Grid felt it had designed a "very safe” pipeline. She noted that the pipeline would have isolation valves that could be activated remotely in the event of an emergency.

The Rockaway pipeline is a key part of the energy initiatives outlined in PlaNYC, Mayor Bloomberg’s far-reaching sustainability plan.

The mayor’s office did not respond to questions regarding whether construction or ongoing maintenance of the Rockaway pipeline would need to be re-thought in light of the area’s vulnerability to future catastrophic storms.

SANDY'S ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT

A full month after Sandy made landfall, the profound impact of the storm on both the residents and natural environment of the Rockaways is grimly evident.

Major arteries in the Rockaways were jammed with emergency and utility trucks on Saturday, and construction on damaged homes was visible throughout. In Breezy Point, the community closest to where pipeline construction will begin shortly, it was possible to see homes that had been torn off their foundations, and a car that had been incinerated almost beyond recognition by the fires that engulfed the area.

Much of the construction on the pipeline will take place in Gateway National Recreation Area, a 26,000-acre National Park, which includes ocean-facing Jacob Riis Park and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. The Bay’s wildlife refuge is the only such refuge in the National Park System, according to the New York Harbor Conservancy.

Other sections of the park — which will eventually be adjacent to pipeline construction — are now serving as sites for hurricane clean-up and reconstruction efforts.

“The Bay has taken a big hit,” said Dan Mundy, vice-president of Jamaica Bay Eco-Watchers. He added that “tremendous amounts” of fuel oil and debris had entered Jamaica Bay as a result of the storm, and that two freshwater ponds had breached “in a very dramatic fashion." Mundy explained that tides had flushed out much of the oil, but he added that the post-storm period was a “critical time for mitigation”.

Just across the Bay, the scope of the tragedy of the storm is visible in the parking lots of Jacob Riis Park, which have been turned into a massive dumping ground for the remains of destroyed homes and other refuse. From the dumping ground, one can see the fences and other beach infrastructure torn apart by the reported 14-foot coastal storm surge that entered the area on the night of Oct. 29.

Because of its vulnerable position, areas around the Rockaway peninsula are now considered possible locations for storm barriers.

A key section of the Rockaway pipeline, to be constructed by Williams, will run directly underneath Jacob Riis Park, delivering gas from an off-shore pipeline to National Grid’s new mains underneath Jamaica Bay. The 10,000-mile Transco natural gas pipeline, which runs parallel to the Rockaway coast, is managed by Williams.

In a later phase of construction, National Grid will connect its cross-Bay lines to customers in Brooklyn and Queens, via a new gas meter and regulating station to be housed within a historic hangar at Floyd Bennett Field, and by eventually linking with an existing gas main on Flatbush Avenue.

The 60,000-square-foot meter station will be constructed by Williams. Parking lots behind the hangars at Floyd Bennett Field are currently a massive staging area for FEMA, the Red Cross, construction companies and scores of fuel tanker trucks.

The National Grid portion of the Rockaway pipeline project has been approved by the city and did not require a public review process or full-scale environmental review. Williams’ off-shore pipeline and meter station proposal, however, is still working its way through a federal environmental review process.

Chris Stockton said that Williams planned to submit a final proposal to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by late 2012 or early 2013. He said that based on the company’s experience with previous applications to FERC, the agency’s review of the proposal could take another eight months.

President Obama signed legislation Nov. 27 bringing the Rockaway pipeline project one step closer to reality. The New York City Natural Gas Enhancement Act authorizes the National Park Service to permit the pipeline and related infrastructure within the boundaries of Gateway National Recreation Area.

In a statement on the signing, Mayor Bloomberg said: “Given the destruction of Hurricane Sandy, this law could not come at a more critical time for New York City. This pipeline will help us build a stable, clean-energy future for New Yorkers and will ensure the reliability of the City’s future energy needs.” The mayor specifically thanked the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Charles Schumer and Congressmen Michael Grimm of Brooklyn and Staten Island, and Gregory Meeks of Queens.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

The Rockaway pipeline project has spurred protests from some local residents and environmental groups, who have raised questions about possible impacts to coastal marine life, and whether a gas pipeline is an appropriate use for an urban park. The city’s commitment to natural gas — a fossil fuel — as an ongoing energy source has also proved controversial.

“This bill puts a pipeline under a popular beach and introduces private industrial use of a federal park, and it does so with no public input,” said Karen Orlando, a local resident and Floyd Bennett Garden Association member.

Local groups like Jamaica Bay Eco-Watchers are watching the federal review process closely, and believe that they may be able to impact decisions that are yet to be made. They also say that the Rockaway Pipeline speaks to public policy questions relevant to the entire city.

Mundy argued that if the Williams section of the pipeline project is to go forward, there must be a commitment to off-set some of the ecological damage that he said he believes will inevitably be inflicted by construction of a 2.79-mile pipeline on the ocean floor.

Another federal agency has raised questions similar to Mundy’s. In October, the Army Corps of Engineers wrote to FERC, requesting that Williams provide more specifics on the ocean floor trenching and dredging techniques it will use, and how the aquatic ecosystem off the Rockaways could be affected.

Stockton said that questions on the project raised by the Army Corps and other agencies would be addressed in the company’s final proposal to FERC.

Mundy said he believes that any possible damage to the ocean floor habitat should be offset by a focus on restoring Jamaica Bay’s saltwater marshes.

Marshes throughout the city have attracted new attention because they can help to blunt the impact of coastal storm surges. “The wetlands will be a big topic of discussion,” said Mundy. He added that not only are they a form of “soft infrastructure”, but they also help to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

At the same time, Orlando argued that the placement of what she describes as “industrial infrastructure” within Floyd Bennett Field, “a couple hundred of feet from a community garden used by four to five-hundred members and their families” has broader implications for both private use of public space and government transparency.

She said the city "couldn’t do that in Prospect Park or Central Park.”

http://www.gothamgazette.com/index.php/topics/environment/2167-after-hurricane-some-begin-to-question-wisdom-of-rockaway-pipeline-project

Bloomberg defends ConEd against Hurricane Sandy criticisms

Critics said the utility should have had better protections against storm damage, but the mayor said he didn’t want to second guess the utility.

BY TINA MOORE / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2012, 

Plenty of New Yorkers are grumbling about ConEd in the wake of rampant power outages that lasted long after Hurricane Sandy, but Mayor Bloomberg isn’t one of them.

He said Friday it’s best utility in America.

"I keep saying this and everybody wants to shoot me for it,” Hizzoner said Friday on his weekly radio show, “but they have done a very good job. And they did not have a lot of damage.”

ConEd was slammed by the storm that overwhelmed its key equipment including a crucial substation on the East River in Manhattan. Critics said the utility should have had better protections but Bloomberg said it’s hard to judge.

“They built a wall around their high-voltage thing — 12 feet. It never comes even remotely close to that. They had 14 feet of water,” he said. “It's easy to second guess. If they'd built it 15 feet and we had 16 feet ...”

The mayor has been a staunch champion of the utility for years, infuriating Queens residents when he rushed to ConEd’s defense during the 2006 Queens blackout.

“If you look at the national statistics, this happens to be virtually the best utility company in the country,” Bloomberg said Friday. “Are they perfect? No. And it's a lot of should have, would have and could have and second guessing but they have done a very good job.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-defends-coned-sandy-criticisms-article-1.1211026#ixzz2DoD2epMK

Before Hurricane Sandy, No Advocate For New York's Utility Ratepayers

Matt Sledge

Huffington Post

Posted: 11/28/2012

NEW YORK -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched an investigation two weeks ago into utility companies' performance before and after Hurricane Sandy left millions of New Yorkers powerless -- some for weeks.

But one issue that could be crucial to Cuomo's special commission review is why there is no independent voice in New York state to stand up for electricity ratepayers before storms hit.

Last March, Cuomo rolled the state's independent Consumer Protection Board's Utility Intervention Unit into the Department of State. The unit now has a bare-bones staff with no authority to sue on behalf of ordinary customers. The governor's administration also has yet to issue a contract for independent utility watchdog and non-profit the Public Utility Law Project -- despite appropriations by the state legislature.

Across the Hudson, even though its population is a fraction of New York state's, New Jersey has a Division of Rate Counsel with dozens of employees on guard against jacked-up rates and lowballed tree-trimming budgets. It also can take utilities to court if it needs to.

"Right now as it stands, we have a diminished consumer protection representation," said New York Assembly Energy Committee Chair Kevin Cahill. "It's a serious, serious issue."

Utilities are claiming a staggering $1.5 billion in damages from Hurricane Sandy. If companies like Con Edison argue -- as they likely will -- that consumers should be forced to pay for most of that, there is no one with the technical knowledge necessary to find out what is warranted and what is not.

The lack of consumer protection also means that before Sandy, nobody was looking into whether ConEd was spending enough on maintenance and infrastructure investments, aside from the state regulator, the Public Service Commission.

New York's Utility Intervention Unit has just two employees, according to Cahill. And at a hearing earlier this year, when he asked about its jurisdiction since it had been rolled into the Department of State, he said, nobody seemed to know.

The governor's office and the Utility Intervention Unit did not respond to requests for comment.

Gerald Norlander, the executive director of PULP, said the state now appears to belatedly be moving to approve his outfit's contract. But he also sees a need for a strengthened, politically independent state utility intervention body.

"Under Pataki and Spitzer and Paterson and Cuomo -- it's not just Cuomo -- it's withered for 15 years," Norlander said of the unit. "They don't have the structural power and the independence they should have."

Having a voice independent from the regulator is critical, said Paul Flanagan, the litigation manager for the comparatively well-staffed and well-defined Division of Rate Counsel in New Jersey.

"We tend to be more the adversaries of the utilities, more so than the (regulator's) staff," he said.

An independent advocate can look out for customers before a disaster like Sandy strikes. It was the Division of Rate Counsel that filed a request in July with New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities to require one of the state's leading utilities, Jersey Central Power & Light, to explain how it was spending its storm mitigation money.

"As the utilities come in, which some of them already have and some of them will, to look for monies to pay for the storm … we look at the cost of things in particular, so we want to see whether the ratepayers are getting value for the money that is spent," said Flanagan.

Many other states have a similar ratepayers' advocate, usually funded by the utilities themselves in a way that amounts to pennies per consumer per year. There is even a National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. But New York is missing out.

"One of the problems with the rate-making structure in New York is that utilities can basically submit the bill for their response to storm damage, and it's pretty much passed through to the consumer," said Cahill.

But in many cases, he argued, utilities should have been spending more before the storm, to make outages less likely and shorter. Instead, he said, they have cut back on tree-trimming that can prevent downed lines, upgrading infrastructure, and hiring the lineworkers necessary to keep systems in shape.

"The question from a consumer representation standpoint at the current moment is, should the ratepayers in any way, shape, or form, be saddled with the costs of recovery where those costs could have been avoided with proper preparation?" he asked. "My answer to that is 'no'."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/hurricane-sandy-utility-ratepayers_n_2207285.html

Fiscal Woes, Long-Held Fears Spur Waste-to-Energy Debate

New York is thinking about diverting garbage from out-of-state landfills and using it to generate electricity locally. The plan pits concerns about city spending and carbon emissions against fears of environmental injustice.

By Bill Hughes | Wednesday, Oct 10, 2012

CityLimits.org

In the years since a tugboat nosed the last barge full of garbage into the massive Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island when it was officially closed back in March of 2001, the tax burden and environmental impact of dealing with New York City's trash have increased dramatically. City officials estimate that in a single year, tractor-trailers log 40 million miles to haul 3 million tons of trash from the five boroughs to out-of-state landfills, mostly in Pennsylvania and Virginia. The flat cost of shipping trash to landfills has risen from $62 per ton in 2001 to $92 per ton last year. A recent report by the Citizen's Budget Commission concluded that, "The waste that New York City sends to landfills generates about 679,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year – the equivalent of adding more than 133,000 cars to the roads."

To address the growing problem, Mayor Michael Bloomberg included a partial solution in his 30-year master plan for the city, PlaNYC, which calls for the construction of a new Waste-to-Energy (WTE) facility to process trash that cannot be recycled. A Request for Proposals (RFP) was issued in March of 2012 to the private sector to build a facility, "…using reliable, cost-effective, sustainable and environmentally sound waste to clean energy technology."

Among the requirements in the RFP was a mandate that the pilot facility be located either in the five boroughs or within an 80-mile radius of the city. It would have to begin by processing 450 tons per day, with the city making no capital investment but paying a tipping fee once it starts sending trash. The 450-ton per day capacity would have to double if the pilot is successful. The bid went out in March, applications were due by June 5th and the award was supposed to be announced in early September. A Bloomberg spokesman last week said the proposals were still under review and an announcement might be made in November. The administration estimates that over 30 years if expanded facilities could accommodate two million tons of trash annually, the city would save about $119 million dollars per year and combined greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by 240,000 metric tons per year.

Almost immediately, environmental justice advocates began protesting, saying the writing on the wall leaned toward a WTE process called thermal processing, which many feel is a fancy code for incineration. The New York Public Interest Research Group reacted to the RFP's announcement by organizing protests and labeling thermal processing as unsafe, unproven and inequitable to communities of color.

Worries about impact on recycling, neighborhoods

The advocates also feel strongly that devoting resources to WTE technology will take away from recycling efforts, where New York lags, ranking 16th out of 27 major U.S. cities in a recent survey. San Francisco, which recycles 77 percent of its household waste, ranked first in the nation, while New York recycled only 15.4 percent in 2011.

"That's just disgraceful," said Eddie Bautista, executive director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. "How can it be that with all the wealth and technology available to this city that we can't manage to do better than we're doing today?"

Bautista also worries about who'll be affected most if the city locates a thermal processing facility within the five boroughs: "There are only so many neighborhoods zoned for this type of activity. They're typically located in low-income communities and they're already over-burdened with industrial polluters."

Bautista took part in a protest back in April when city officials took prospective bidders on a tour of potential sites, including the Fresh Kills landfill. And he was not alone.

"We've suffered enough out here and we've suffered disproportionately," said City Councilman Vincent Ignizio of Staten Island at a September meeting of the council's Solid Waste and Sanitation Committee. "When Robert Moses opened Fresh Kills in 1948 it was only supposed to be for three years. It took 50-plus years for us to finally get it closed, and toward the end we were the only dumping ground for all the city's garbage." Ignizio added that he grew up within smelling distance of Fresh Kills and remembers many nights sleeping in his parents' bedroom because they had the only air conditioner which could mask the odor of the dump.

The outcry from residents and Staten Island elected officials was loud enough that the Bloomberg administration removed the entire borough of Staten Island from consideration in the RFP. But the other boroughs are still in the mix.

Technology has defenders

Proponents of WTE technology argue that thermal processing is a form of recycling and that new technologies and EPA regulations have eliminated the odor and air pollution many people connect with the process of incinerating trash. Professor Nickolas J. Themelis, director of the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University, said he thinks that much of the opposition to creating WTE plants in the city stems from people's memories of the bad old days.

"At one point New York had 30 municipal incinerators and about 15,000 residential incinerators with no regulation at all. It was a mess," said Themelis. "There is this kind of animus among people who have been exposed to incinerators in the past. They associate them with black smoke and horrific pollution. But the truth is, those are all gone now. The pollution generated by trucking waste to landfills can't compare to how little a modern WTE facility produces. The people who oppose these technologies are like the Flat Earth Society, they are holding back progress."

Themelis recently completed work on a large collaborative study for the Inter-American Development Bank to recommend the best WTE technology for waste management in Latin America. "Regrettably, we came to the conclusion that the technology we use now is the best to use. Over the past decades roughly 125 plants have been built around the world using thermal combustion … with increasingly strict emissions standards. The data we have collected is, I think, unassailable. These systems produce far less emissions than landfilling."

There are currently 10 WTE facilities statewide licensed by the Department of Environmental Conservation to burn municipal waste and convert it into steam and electricity. One is located in Peekskill, about 50 miles up the Hudson River. The facility is owned by Wheelabrator, a subsidiary of Waste Management, the country's largest waste processor, which serves more than 20 million residential, commercial and municipal customers nationwide.

The Peekskill facility processes approximately 700,000 tons of waste per year, or about 95 percent of the household trash generated by Westchester County, according to Operations Manager Brett Baker. Three, nine-story tall boilers burn about 2,250 tons of pre-recycled trash per day, using the trash as fuel. The heat (over 2,000-degrees Fahrenheit) drives a turbine which generates electricity—60 megawatts of electricity per hour.—which is sold to Con Edison via a direct feed to its grid. The ash is cooled and sifted for recyclable metal and the remains, about 10 percent of the initial volume, are sent to landfills. The emissions are forced through a series of filtering systems until they are below state and federal guidelines for pollutants, then released through one large stack.

"We have about a 90 percent reduction rate in the waste stream," Baker told a reporter in September. "And as you can tell when you drove up here, we burn clean. There's virtually no odor at all coming out of the stack and everything is well within EPA guidelines." Waste Management officials claim they operate enough WTE facilities across the U.S. to power 1 million homes and they expect to double that output by 2020.

Of course, not everyone shares a rosy outlook on the plant. A December 2010 report by the Peekskill Environmental Justice Council identified the facility as, "A major source of air pollution." A state permit issued in March 2012 listed the wide ranges of toxic pollutants the plant is permitted to release, including up to 10 tons per year each of dioxins, mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium.

Newer technologies and emissions controls were recently approved at a facility run by one of the likely bidders for the NYC contract, Covanta Energy, which currently burns some of New York's trash for $66 per ton at its facility in Newark. Environmental activists believe those changes would not have been made without public pressure. Industry analysts point out that waste processors are trying to find an economic "sweet spot," where new technology implementation costs don't swallow up potential profits.

Searching for viable options

New York's RFP identified several different WTE technologies that companies could propose besides thermal incineration—like plasma gasification, hydrolysis and anaerobic digestion.

In early September The New York Times profiled a non-profit company with a plasma gasification facility in Florida, one that burns municipal waste at more than 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit then electrifies it. The promoters of the technology claim the process breaks down the chemical bonds of carcinogenic material like PCB's, asbestos and medical waste, rendering them harmless without creating dioxin or other harmful byproducts. But opponents point out that pushing such technology will hinder recycling and the development of ecologically friendly products and policies. Others point out that the plasma gasification consumes roughly half the energy it creates to feed its own power requirements. 

The other technologies in the city's RFP, anaerobic digestion and hydrolysis, deal mainly with organic materials and would only handle a small percentage of the city's waste, meaning thermal processing might be the most effective alternative to landfilling.

Proponents of the technology point to several European cities like Vienna, Paris and Copenhagen which have built thermal processing WTE facilities inside their city limits and incorporated them into the cityscape.

But critics like the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives say the higher a country's incineration rate, the lower its recycling rate. The group released a report tracking waste treatment strategies across the 27-member European Union. According to the report, while Denmark had the highest rate of WTE incineration at 54 percent of the country's total waste stream, it only recycled 23 percent. "It is necessary to implement a system that reduces waste generation, reuses and recycles waste, and phases out both incineration and landfilling," the report concluded.

On Oct. 5 San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee announced that the city had reached an 80 percent landfill diversion rate through aggressive recycling, reuse and composting initiatives making it the "greenest" city in North America and moving it closer to the goal of "zero waste"—a target of which Themelis is skeptical.

"There are people who talk about ‘zero waste,' but zero waste is not a reality, it's a fantasy. True, we should recycle as much as is practical, but you cannot neglect that you must do something with what can't be recycled."Themelis added that America's comfort level with landfill arises partially from an excess of open space that few other countries enjoy. "New York City sends 100,000 truckloads of landfill out of state every year, but sooner or later the state borders will be closed, that's not going away."

According to recent EPA data, there are currently 87 facilities in the U.S. burning trash to generate electricity. The combined output of these facilities amounts to approximately 2,500 megawatts, or 0.3 of total national power generation. The agency cites the high construction cost of such facilities as one reason that the public will and financing to build them has been lacking.

It's unclear if the city's fiscal challenge and growing concern about its carbon footprint will create the political support necessary for WTE in New York. Councilwoman Letitia James, who chairs the Sanitation and Solid Waste Committee, said she supports the RFP initiative, but under the conditions that minority communities are not disproportionately impacted and the economics make good sense. "I'm open to examining it," said James during a recent interview. "Not necessarily supporting it, but examining it. Because there's just no way we can continue to afford to ship millions of tons of garbage out of the state." 

http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4638/fiscal-woes-long-held-fears-spur-waste-to-energy-debate

New York tells Con Ed to prepare in case Indian Point shuts

Wed Nov 28, 2012 3:02pm EST

* New York governor wants Indian Point shut

* Entergy wants to run reactors for 20 more years

* Indian Point current licenses expire in 2013, 2015

By Scott DiSavino

Nov 28 (Reuters) - New York energy regulators told power companies in New York City to develop plans to keep the lights on in the Big Apple in case the giant Indian Point nuclear power plant, which supplies about a quarter of the city's electricity, is forced to shut down.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants the two reactors at Indian Point shut when their operating licenses expire in 2013 and 2015 in part because the nuclear plant is located in the New York metropolitan area, home to some 19 million people.

The governor has said even the most unlikely possibility of an accident is too much in the heavily populated area.

U.S. power company Entergy Corp, which owns Indian Point, says, however, the plant is safe, and the company is seeking to extend the reactors' licenses for another 20 years.

The 2,063-megawatt (MW) Indian Point plant is about 40 miles (60 km) north of Manhattan along the Hudson River.

"Entergy and its employees continuously demonstrate the plants are safely operated, and is committed to safely operating this important facility for many more years to come," Entergy spokesman Jerry Nappi told Reuters Wednesday in an email.

On Tuesday, the state's energy regulator, New York Public Service Commission (NYPSC), directed New York City power company Consolidated Edison Inc to work with the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to develop a contingency plan to address the needs that would arise in the event Indian Point shuts down.

NYPA is a state-owned power generator that supplies electricity to government customers in New York City, including schools, hospitals, government buildings, subways and commuter trains.

"We will comply with the Commission's directive to work with the New York Power Authority to develop a contingency plan addressing the needs that would arise in the event of an Indian Point shutdown," Con Edison told Reuters in an emailed statement.

A shutdown of Indian Point, without sufficient alternatives, would threaten electric system reliability and potentially raise electric market prices, Con Ed said.

Several energy companies have already proposed power plants and transmission lines that could partially replace Indian Point, including units of NRG Energy Inc, Brookfield Asset Management Inc, BP Plc, Calpine Corp , GenOn Energy Inc and Iberdrola SA.

ENTERGY SEEKS NEW LICENSES

To keep the reactors running over the next couple of decades, Entergy filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2007 to renew the Indian Point licenses.

A decision by the NRC commissioners on the licenses might not happen for years, as agency judges are still holding hearings on challenges to the plant's continued operation.

Entergy, however, can continue to operate the reactors even after their licenses expire so long as the federal renewal process is ongoing.

The three judges at the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB), which serves as the agency's judicial arm, started evidentiary hearings near the plant in October to consider 10 complaints raised by New York State and two public interest groups, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc and Riverkeeper Inc.

The NRC has scheduled several days of hearings through at least mid-December. On Wednesday, the NRC said it did not know when, or if, a second round of hearings would be scheduled and that a decision on the challenges would likely come months after the hearings are done.

SANDY PROMPTS ACTION

The contingency plan for Indian Point was one of Governor Cuomo's Energy Highway Blueprint proposals issued by a task force in October.

Cuomo proposed the Energy Highway plan in January to modernize the state's energy infrastructure.

The state's Public Service Commission said it decided to move forward this week on three proposals in the Energy Highway Blueprint, including the Indian Point proposal, because of Superstorm Sandy.

Sandy caused billions of dollars of damage and left millions of New Yorkers in the dark - some for more than two weeks - after striking the U.S. East Coast in late October.

The other Blueprint recommendations the Public Service Commission said it has decided move forward on now are proposals to build over 1,000 MW of new transmission capacity between upstate New York and New York City, at an estimated cost of $1 billion, and proposals to expand the state's use of natural gas by residential and business customers.

One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes in New York.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/28/utilities-entergy-indianpoint-idUSL1E8MS77020121128

Toxic brew of Superstorm Sandy floodwater and fuel oil stinks up Manhattan Beach apt. building

Toxic brew of Superstorm Sandy floodwater and fuel oil stinks up apt. building

BY LORE CROGHAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012, 

It’s the stinkiest building in Brooklyn, disgusted tenants charge.

Nauseating fumes from a nasty cocktail of fuel oil and seawater are making them gag at 301 Oriental Blvd. in Manhattan Beach.

Superstorm Sandy is to blame — and a landlord who’s maddeningly slow in cleaning up and repairing the apartment house, several said.

“Every night my head hurts,” said tenant Marissa Anastasia, 74, whose health is fragile after suffering a brain aneurysm four years ago. “When I wake up in the morning I can’t breathe.”

The stink that won’t go away is a new twist in the tales of woe coming from hard-hit Brooklyn waterfront neighborhoods where thousands struggle with storm damage.

The killer storm flooded the Oriental Blvd. building’s basement up to the ceiling and sprang leaks in oil stored for the boiler, leaving behind 8,700 gallons of toxic brew.

Nearly three weeks after the savage storm the stench lingers in the six-story property because work crews still haven’t finished cleaning the sludge out of the basement.

Numerous tenants are holed up at 301 Oriental — among them a wheelchair-bound 90-plus-year-old — despite a letter from the landlord that warned, “If you choose to stay in the building you are doing so at your own risk.”

Breathing fumes from spilled heating oil can cause difficulty in concentrating, dizziness, headaches, increased blood pressure, nausea and irritated eyes, nose and throat, health experts say.

In addition to the foul odor the 49-unit building has no electricity and an emergency boiler provides heat and hot water only briefly in the morning and evening.

Anastasia and her husband don’t have money for a hotel or family they can stay with and don’t want to impose on friends whose home they visit at night to watch TV.

“When I get up in the morning I feel dizzy,” said Alex, 66, a school custodian.

“Our throats are so sore we’re hardly even talking.”

The fuel fumes at the 1930s-vintage building aren’t as overpowering as they were the first week after Sandy hit but they’re still giving Mike Vosburgh frequent migraines.

“There are times I go in solitude and cry,” said the retired postal service supervisor, 61.

His sister Sue, 57, said the darkness, cold and stink have made their home feel “like a war zone.”

Tamara Berlyavsky kept the windows open in her freezing apartment when she and her husband and daughter tried sleeping there.

“It smelled like a gas station,” she said.

After four nights they decided it was too dangerous to be there and bailed out. Though they’re staying at a friend’s house now her clothes still reek.

“I was in a meeting and was embarrassed,” the civil engineer said. “I told people, ‘Don’t smell me.’”

Landlord Tomas Rosenthal of Hampshire Properties said in a statement that he called in cleanup crews, plumbers and electricians right after the storm and is “doing his outmost to provide relief and restore all services as fast as possible.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/stinkiest-building-brooklyn-tenants-charge-article-1.1203371#ixzz2ChNVkBHw

Hurricane Power Outages After Sandy Not Extraordinary, According To Report Analyzing Katrina, Past Storms

By JONATHAN FAHEY 11/16/12 

AP

NEW YORK -- As the number of nights without power stretched on for thousands left in the dark after Superstorm Sandy, patience understandably turned to anger and outrage.

But an Associated Press analysis of outage times from other big hurricanes and tropical storms suggests that, on the whole, the response to Sandy by utility companies, especially in hardest-hit New York and New Jersey, was typical – or even a little faster than elsewhere after other huge storms.

The AP, with the assistance of Ventyx, a software company that helps utilities manage their grids, used U.S. Energy Department data to determine how many days it took to restore 95 percent of the peak number of customers left without power after major hurricanes since 2004, including Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Ike and Irene.

After Sandy, New York utilities restored power to at least 95 percent of customers 13 days after the peak number of outages was reported. New Jersey reached that same level in 11 days and West Virginia in 10 days.

Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 and Ike in 2008 all resulted in longer outages for customers in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Florida.

The longest stretch to 95 percent restoration since 2004 was Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, where local utilities had power restored to only three-quarters of their customers after 23 days before Hurricane Rita hit and caused additional outages.

Rita left Texas customers in the dark for 16 days; Katrina knocked out power to Mississippi customers for 15 days; Wilma and Ike knocked Florida and Texas out for 14 days each before power was restored to 95 percent of those who lost it, according to the federal data.

New York and New Jersey recovered far faster after last year's Hurricane Irene. It took seven days for New York to restore 95 percent of customers and six days for New Jersey. But the number of outages in each state was less than half than from Sandy.

The restoration target of 95 percent allowed the AP to compare responses to the largest number of recent storms using Energy Department data, and is considered by industry experts to provide a meaningful picture of the speed with which utilities restored service to the vast majority of customers.

A week or two without power is, without question, a difficult and frustrating hardship. There's the spoiled food in the fridge and the dark nights. There's the fire danger from relying on candles. No electricity also can mean no heat. In tall apartment buildings, it means no elevator service, a serious problem for the infirm or elderly who can't navigate stairs. For those who rely on mobile phones for communication, it means no way to charge phones – and therefore no way to communicate with loved ones or emergency services.

Michael Redpath of Toms River, N.J. was without power for 15 days before getting it back this week. He and his wife stayed in their home for the first week after Sandy because their friends also had lost power. As some power in the region was restored, and Redpath's wife got sick from too many nights in the cold, they started staying over with friends.

"It's just so disorienting to be without power, to be out of your house and to not know what's going on," he says.

Determining the quality of a utility's restoration efforts after an outage is difficult to do, experts say. That's because every storm generates a unique cocktail of mayhem that differs from location to location.

Just because New York and New Jersey utilities restored power in a range that is normal by historical standards does not prove that all of the utilities in the region performed equally well, or that they performed better or worse than their peers responding to outages in other states, or that there isn't plenty of room for improvement.

Frustrated residents, business owners and state and local officials lashed out at their electric utilities. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York formed a commission to investigate the responses of utilities in his state, and the operations chief of one utility, the Long Island Power Authority, resigned.

Cuomo called LIPA "beyond repair" and also expressed frustration with the performance of Consolidated Edison, the electric utility for New York City and Westchester County to the north.

Also, a positive general performance doesn't create any goodwill for those still suffering.

Sam Kusack, who owns an architectural metal fabrication shop in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was still without power Thursday, 17 days after going dark. Red Hook is in an isolated section of Brooklyn, and Con Edison only began laying new underground wires near his shop this week.

Workers told him power would be back by Friday, but, Kusack said, the utility had called him several times in the early days of the crisis to say his power would soon be restored. Those calls stopped long ago, and Kusack has continued to rely on a generator that gobbles expensive diesel fuel.

"It was a big storm, but it's been a while," he said. "It's tough to run a company on a generator, with no power. I have 25 employees, and a payroll to meet."

The fact that it has taken utilities roughly the same amount of time to restore the vast majority of customers as after similar-sized storms suggests that restoring power after an enormous weather event is simply a long, difficult process.

"The work is no magic, it's hard, grueling work," says Arshad Mansoor of the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry-funded technology research group.

Sandy's most prominent feature was its enormous footprint and record number of outages. All told, Sandy caused 8.5 million power outages across 21 states, the highest outage total ever.

The Edison Electric Institute, an industry group, estimates 67,000 workers from utilities and other firms in several states worked to restore power, but they faced a huge volume of work. For example, New Jersey's biggest utility, Public Service Electric & Gas, had to cut down 41,000 trees, replace 2,500 poles and install 1,000 new transformers. At its peak, 77 percent of PSE&G'S 2.2 million customers lost power.

Sandy also dumped 2-to-3 feet of snow in West Virginia, knocking power out to a quarter of that state's customers. And efforts to restore power along coastal properties were complicated by a storm surge that flooded dozens of substations on Long Island, in New York City and in New Jersey. For example, a storm surge and subsequent explosion at a substation on the East Side of Manhattan plunged the lower third of that borough into darkness.

Equipment in all of those substations had to be cleaned or replaced before the substations could be re-energized. Only then could utilities see if the lines between each substation and the thousands of customers each one serves also had to be repaired.

Utilities first fix problems that affect the largest number of customers, then work their way down to smaller problems affecting handfuls of customers. With Sandy and other big storms there are also thousands of customers who cannot get power because their homes are damaged and it is not possible or safe for the utility to restore power.

This restoration approach is reasonable, experts say, but it leads to intense frustration when those last few in the dark see their neighbors back to normal. Customers are generally understanding for two days without power, utility officials say. Then they are not.

Those last few homes and businesses, such as Kusack's firm, are often the hardest to restore; on many occasions, the days turn into weeks. After Con Edison restored power to nearly all of its customers 10 days after the storm, it said it was facing 3,600 restoration jobs in Westchester County that involved 11 or fewer customers each. LIPA said midday Thursday that 2,942 customers were still without power, not including those in flooded areas who cannot receive power until their own equipment is repaired and certified.

This is all part of a utility's job, of course. Delivering power reliably is the single most important task for an electric utility. Without question, some do a better job of planning, managing logistics and communication with customers and local officials than others.

"Not every utility is the same, not every utility is in the same state of readiness," says David Wright, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

EPRI's Mansoor said one indication that planning in the region affected by Sandy was good is that utilities did not run low on workers, poles, transformers, or other supplies. "Crews were available, spare parts were available," he said. "That was not an issue in this recovery."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has defended the response of the utilities in his state, and perhaps for good reason. Sixty-five percent of New Jersey utility customers lost power, 2.6 million homes and businesses. Compared with other big storms, New Jersey's utilities restored power to most customers in the shortest amount of time for a state with such a high percentage of outages.

A common complaint from residents throughout the region: The lack of accurate communication about when power would be restored.

Redpath, who is served by Jersey Central Power & Light, said he understands that the restoration job was enormous and would have understood if it took utilities three or four weeks to restore power. But for an entire week he was told almost daily that power would be restored the next day. He said he just happened to discover the power had finally been restored when he noticed the lights were on his neighbor's porch while driving by.

"I think (JCP&L) did a phenomenal job of marshaling resources, and the people on the ground did a phenomenal job," he said. "The problem was a combination of misinformation and no information. We would have managed differently if we knew what to expect."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/16/hurricane-power-outages-after-sandy_n_2146393.html