Proposed Diesel Fuel-Fired
Power Plant on Chelsea Creek
CLF is fighting a proposed diesel fuel-fired power plant in the environmental justice community of Chelsea, Massachusetts. The power plant will be located on Chelsea Creek directly across the street from Burke Elementary School which educates all of the public elementary students in Chelsea. Click here for a map of the proposed site.
CLF believes that this is the wrong project in the wrong place. The people of Chelsea do not want another industrial facility that will adversely affect their environment and their health. Furthermore, this diesel fuel-fired plant will cost rate-payers millions of dollars and emit more global warming pollution.
Chelsea is an environmental justice community where over 60 percent of its residents are people of color and nearly 40 percent live below the poverty line. Furthermore, it is overburdened with 90 hazardous waste sites per square mile and poor public health with some of the highest asthma hospitalization rates in the state.
This diesel fuel-fired power plant will add 37 tons of particulate matter per year to the already polluted air in the city. In addition, the proposed plant is counter to the vision that Chelsea residents have for a greener city with access to their waterfront.
This power plant will cost roughly $100 million dollars but is intended only to meet peak demands for electricity such as on the hottest days of the summer and the coldest days of the winter. Continuing to build power plants to meet our insatiable appetite for electricity is not cost-effective and it is counter-productive to Massachusetts ’ effort to combat climate change.
Instead, CLF is advocating for rate payers money to be invested in energy conservation, efficiency efforts, demand response and clean, renewable energy sources. In particular, demand response can shave the demand for power at peak times eliminating the need for this type of power plant altogether. Click here to learn more about demand response.
CLF has formed partnerships with Alternative for Community and Environment (ACE), Chelsea Green Space, and local residents to oppose this power plant in a number of arenas including on the streets of Chelsea , at City Hall and in formal administrative proceedings. CLF and ACE have submitted comments in the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) process in which the MEPA Secretary recently issued a certificate on the proponent’s draft environmental impact report. The certificate dealt a serious blow to the proposal of a diesel fuel-fired power plant in the Designated Port Area along Chelsea Creek . Also, CLF and ACE successfully intervened, on behalf of residents in Chelsea and surrounding communities, in the permitting proceedings of the Energy Facilities Siting Board (EFSB). Click here to see the ruling.
Contacts:
Eloise Lawrence
Staff Attorney
(617) 850-1736
Press:
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