Lou Cicigline, a retired state corrections sergeant, surveys Danskammer from across the Hudson, near his home in the hamlet of Chelsea. Lee Harris
Get it in your inbox.
This story was published in partnership with New York Focus.
In the late 19th century, Newburgh in the Hudson Valley represented the bleeding edge of industrial technology. Streams powering wool, gunpowder, flour and saw mills emptied into the Hudson River, where steamships carried industrial cargo. Thomas Edison in 1884 selected Newburgh to host one of the world’s first central power stations, making it the second electrified municipality in the United States after lower Manhattan.
A century later, Newburgh’s economic leadership had stalled, as manufacturers relocated and the river lost shipping traffic to trucking. The city of 28,000 now has the highest poverty rate downstate, and Newburgh’s mostly Latino and Black population struggles with high crime, water safety crises and rates of asthma more than twice the statewide average.
Newburgh has intermittently been visited by revitalization efforts. Then-first lady Hillary Clinton toured the city’s Dutch Reformed Church in 1998 as part of a campaign to preserve historic architecture. The church’s ceiling later collapsed. A banner reading “Save America’s Treasures” still hangs in front.
Now, new energy production has been proposed in Newburgh, but it is drawing opposition from environmentalists. A natural gas-fired power plant applied for state approval to shutter its current aging facility and rebuild higher up on the bank of the Hudson as a brand-new plant.
The Danskammer power plant rebuild is the first proposal for a large-scale fracked-gas facility to be considered under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signature climate legislation, which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 85% from 1990 levels by 2050.
The application is the first test of how the Public Service Commission’s Siting Board deals with proposed fossil fuel infrastructure under that landmark law, passed in 2019.
“If it is rejected on climate grounds, it will mean basically this will be the last application for a gas plant in New York state, because if this one can’t meet the requirements now, every year that goes by, it gets harder,” said Richard Webster, legal director for Riverkeeper, a nonprofit group that works on water issues in the Hudson River.
Two other downstate fossil fuel plants – NRG in Astoria, Queens, and Eastern Generation in Gowanus, Brooklyn – are also currently seeking state approval.
Climate advocates say the state should be decommissioning fossil fuel plants rather than approving new ones. Danskammer proponents argue that natural gas is cleaner than coal, and a new plant will be an improvement over the older, less-efficient plants, like neighboring Roseton Generating Station, also in Newburgh.
In March, hundreds of activists spoke at public hearings held by the Siting Board. Only a small minority supported granting Danskammer’s permit.
Originally coal-fired, Danskammer was repowered to run on gas after being damaged in Superstorm Sandy. The facility now operates as a “peaker plant,” revving up only a few days per year when electricity demand surges, typically on the hottest summer days.
The proposed new plant would continue to burn natural gas delivered through a pipeline. (New York banned fracking in 2015, but still imports gas, including fracked gas, from states like Pennsylvania.) As a relatively more efficient baseload plant, the new facility would be called upon by the grid to operate more frequently – humming away as much as 60-70% of the time, according to Michelle Hook, Danskammer’s vice president of public relations.
Though it emits less carbon dioxide and conventional pollutants than coal or oil, burned gas still creates climate pollution. Methane released in the extraction, transport and combustion of natural gas is also an especially potent greenhouse gas. One 2017 study of three gas-fired power plants found that the facilities were releasing more than 20 times more methane than their self-reported estimates.
The Danskammer proposal comes as Indian Point, a nuclear power plant in the nearby town of Buchanan in Westchester County, was set to close by April 30, leaving the state more heavily reliant on burning fossil fuels.
“When you take a zero-emissions generator as large as Indian Point offline, and you don’t have zero-emissions power generation to replace it, emissions are going to go up,” Hook said. “You can either get that power from a cleaner source, like a new, upgraded Danskammer, with all of the new emissions controls that are required on new plants – just like when new cars roll off the assembly line, they have much more emissions controls than a 1970 Buick – or, you can use the old facilities.”
Environmental advocates point to a study by New York Independent System Operator, a nonprofit corporation that operates the state grid, that found there were no immediate reliability concerns for the state’s electricity demand if the new Danskammer facility wasn’t built.
But proponents of natural gas say the continued use of fossil fuels will be a necessary part of the transition to green energy. Eventually, studies have found, the state will need to build on-demand capacity that can run during lulls of wind and solar, as those energy sources become a greater share of New York’s energy mix.
Danskammer’s filings to the Siting Board say that the plant would increase emissions of carbon dioxide in New York state. However, it says, carbon dioxide emissions would decline in the Northeast region overall because the new Danskammer plant would be called upon to run more frequently, displacing older, dirtier sources of power.
Danskammer opponents say that analysis fails to take into account renewable projects currently underway. Also, climate activists say, building new fossil fuel infrastructure could have long-lasting “lock-in” effects.
“While we have climate goals enshrined into law, if and when the state misses those goals, nothing functionally happens. And so every new piece of fossil fuel infrastructure you build runs the risk of locking you into a scenario where you miss those goals,” said Alex Beauchamp, Northeast region director at Food & Water Watch.
Across the Hudson River from Newburgh, in the hamlet of Chelsea, Lou Cicigline, a retired state corrections sergeant, is also concerned about the planned construction. Cicigline moved to Chelsea from New York City 20 years ago, hoping to spend more time in nature.
“Throughout the years of living here, when that plant did run once in a while, you seen all that smoke coming out, (when) the wind direction is coming this way,” he said. For most of the time Cicigline has lived in the Hudson Valley, Danskammer burned coal.
“That stuff’s coming right into my house,” he recalled thinking. Cicigline has recently had problems with breathing, he said, and he has been seeing his doctor to try to determine the cause. He wonders whether air quality played a role.
Cicigline also worries about the climate-heating effects of fracking, and about nitrogen oxides, which are produced at low levels by the burning of natural gas – though significantly less than by burning coal – and can worsen smog and contribute to respiratory problems.
In filings, Danskammer has suggested that it could convert the plant to run on green hydrogen or renewable natural gas after 2040 – provided New York determines those experimental fuels count as zero emissions.
Environmentalists note that these fuels are currently unproven, prohibitively expensive and raise their own climate concerns. Most commercially available hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels, while a tiny percentage of the hydrogen supply consists of green hydrogen, which is produced through electrolysis.
Renewable natural gas is drawn from landfills or manure in industrial agriculture, rather than drilled. Some green groups are enthusiastic about renewable natural gas, but others, such as Food & Water Watch, say increasing demand for it would incentivize the expansion of environmentally harmful factory farming.
If the transition to renewable natural gas or another source couldn’t be made to fit within the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, Hook said, the plant would simply shut down.
According to the legislation, all electricity generation must be carbon-free by 2040. But the law has few interim milestones, aside from a goal of 70% renewable by 2030. And no individual plant faces a hard stop in 2030.
“Probably, Danskammer is looking at the fact that other than the 2040 date, there are no other hard dates for gas plants to have to stop operating. And I think that’s where they see their opening,” said Hayley Carlock, director of environmental advocacy and legal affairs for Scenic Hudson, a regional environmental organization.
The state’s Climate Action Council, a 22-member panel tasked with charting the course for carrying out the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, has gotten off to a slow start, according to members. “Having some clear written, enforceable guidance or requirements would just make things easier,” Carlock said.
Aura Lopez Zarate, a community organizer with a focus on reproductive justice, enjoys kayaking in the Hudson and walking her dog by the shore.
“If I was to have a family here in five or 10 years, I want my children to have clean air, clean water, a clean environment – like we all do. How can I do that when there’s a plant pumping chemicals into our air?” the 24-year-old said.
Activists like Lopez Zarate have been disappointed by state elected officials’ refusal to weigh in on Danskammer. While at least 20 municipalities around the Hudson Valley, including Newburgh and Beacon, have passed resolutions opposing the expansion, state legislators have held back.
Newburgh’s state Sen. James Skoufis, a Democrat, has been largely silent on the issue, with the exception of a town hall in 2019, in which he warned that getting rid of Danskammer could spell “financial calamity” for Marlboro Central School District.
Part of the town of Newburgh, where the plant sits, falls within the Marlboro school district. As a result, the Danskammer plant and the neighboring Roseton plant are a major part of the tax base for the neighboring town of Marlborough.
That school district mostly serves Marlborough, which is 93% white and has more than twice the median household income of Newburgh.
“To know we have this tax base for the next 20 years will help Marlborough families,” Town Supervisor Alphonso Lanzetta said at the hearing last month.
Environmental experts say local taxes are often a roadblock to decommissioning fossil fuel infrastructure. One way to avoid local holdouts might be to regionalize the tax base for public education.
“We’re going to have to make sure that as these fossil fuel plants start to close, we have to address the local tax issue, because otherwise, potentially, school taxes are going to take a real hit,” said Jen Metzger, the former Democratic state senator from Ulster and Orange counties who helped design the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and proposed legislation, which never passed, that aimed to halt the construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure.
An advisory panel to the Climate Action Council plans to recommend that New York declare a moratorium on new natural gas facilities, potentially thwarting Danskammer’s proposed repowering. Meanwhile, legislation sponsored by state Sen. Jabari Brisport, a Democrat from Brooklyn, would halt permitting for peaker plants until they submit plans to switch to battery storage and renewables within five years. That bill recently passed the state Senate, but has not yet been brought to a vote in the Assembly.
Brisport said applications like Danskammer’s likely wouldn’t be subject to that legislation. “This is the first plant that I’m hearing is trying to convert from peaker to base load. That sounds like a loophole that we overlooked when constructing the bill,” he said in an interview. “It makes me wonder if we should go back and try and strengthen the bill now, to avoid situations like this.”
Skoufis voted against Brisport’s bill to stop peaker plant permitting. When he spoke to Skoufis about the bill, Brisport said, the senator from Orange County cited concerns that the bill could “cause a domino effect with the loss of property tax.”
“I disagreed, mostly because it wasn’t a bill to make them close down – it was primarily to help them transition,” Brisport said. “You’re getting property tax on the property whether it’s a gas-fired plant, or it’s a plant running renewable energy and battery storage.”
Skoufis could not be made available for an interview for this article. A spokesperson didn’t respond to Brisport’s description of their exchange.
Even as pressure builds to ban fossil fuel buildouts, the governor has resisted calls to quash new gas construction. “If you say as an absolute, well you can't build any more natural gas plants, then the question arises: What happens if you don’t have enough renewables online?” Cuomo said at a press conference on April 19. “I’m hopeful that we do. But what if you don’t?”
Danskammer supporters at the hearings were drawn heavily from the building trades, which anticipate temporary construction work on the new facility.
Todd Diorio, business manager of Laborers’ Local 17, has publicly cautioned against the “bad faith” and “scare tactics” of Danskammer’s critics.
Danskammer says the plant would not bring new permanent jobs, but would keep employment on par with the roughly 45 workers employed at the current facility.
Workers like Mark Sanchez-Potter, a substitute teacher who has led organizing efforts against the plant, agree that Newburgh needs job opportunities, but say the decision between environmental priorities and hard-hat jobs is a false choice. Rather than fossil fuel infrastructure, Sanchez-Potter would rather see the area invest in “low-carbon work” – jobs in sectors like nursing, teaching and domestic care.
Others, such as Metzger, suggest rebuilding Danskammer as a battery storage facility. In 2019, plans for a hybrid natural gas and battery facility in nearby Ulster County were dropped following residents’ and activists’ objections in favor of a utility-scale battery plant.
In the meantime, there are signs of new commercial development in Newburgh. In 2019, Hudson Taco opened in a former train station that had fallen into disrepair. Now, the restaurant is partnering with a local brewery that opened in 2012.
Not all development is welcome, however. Lopez Zarate worries the area may fall prey to gentrification, and richer arrivals could displace current inhabitants.
Still, the restaurant could help with Newburgh’s revitalization, the owner told Hudson Valley Magazine. “This is going to be an eclectic Mexican eatery as opposed to a taqueria.”
New York Focus is an independent investigative news publication covering New York state and city politics. Sign up for their newsletter here.
NEXT STORY: Should cops have to live in NYC?
Do Not Sell My Personal Information
When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.
Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link
If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.
Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.
Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.
If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page. Save Settings
A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.
Help us tailor content specifically for you: