For Immediate Release
Contact: Jeff Tittel, NJ Sierra Club, 609-558-9100
The Hoboken City Council has unanimously passed a resolution that opposes NJ Transit’s Power Plant in Kearny, New Jersey.
“Hoboken is standing up for our lungs and our environment. They are the first city to pass a resolution against NJ Transit’s unneeded fossil fuel power plant. Hoboken has been a leader in fighting climate change, getting to carbon neutral and trying to make the city more resilient. This power plant would directly affect all of the work that the city is trying to do. Not only will they get the impacts of air pollution, impacts of climate change too,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “The city should be a model for other towns and municipalities to follow. More importantly, Governor Murphy should look at Hoboken’s opposition as an alarm bell going off. We are in the middle of a health emergency and we don’t need more pollution and more bad air days from another fossil fuel power plant. We thank the Hoboken City council for putting people first before polluters.”
As part of its resiliency program, NJ TRANSITGRID is moving forward with building a 104-140 MW natural gas-fired power generating plant. The proposed location is in an industrial zone in Kearny, NJ. Transmission lines and associated infrastructure will extend to substations in Kearny, Jersey City, Bayonne, Hoboken, Weehawken, Union City, and North Bergen, NJ.
“It is important that Hoboken is standing up to NJ Transit’s power plant, now we need more cities and towns to stand up and oppose this power plant, it will only cause more pollution and impact public health. NJ Transit are pushing forward with their dirty power plant that would emit 575,000 metric tons of C02 South Kearny and the areas around the plant already have some of the worst air quality in the nation, and this project will add hundreds of thousands of tons of pollution. This plant will mean more air pollution and cause an increase of harmful chemicals like fine particulates PM2.5, NOX and SOx,” said Tittel.
According to a new nationwide Harvard study, Coronavirus patients in areas that had high levels of air pollution before the pandemic are more likely to die from the infection than patients in cleaner parts of the country. Harvard University analyzed 3,080 counties in the United States and found that higher levels of the tiny, dangerous particles in the air, known as PM 2.5 were associated with higher death rates from the disease.
“NJ Transit’s power plant is in an area that floods and the fill for the plant will create even more flooding. The proposed site location for the natural gas power plant is on top of the former Koppers Seaboard Coke and By-Products plant. Contamination from past operations, like coke production, gas conditioning, coal-tar produced toxic chemicals like benzene, lead, mercury and other harmful metals has been capped, however building a power plant can cause serious safety and environmental implications,” said Tittel.
The grid will be powered by a 104-140 MW natural gas-fired power generating plant in Kearny, New Jersey. The NJ Transit grid would cost close to $526 million.
“They say that this project will be cleaner than using the electricity that they’re currently getting, which is false. The NJ grid is about 50% air pollution free. It is made up of about 31% nuclear, 14% renewable RPS, 5% solar, and a small amount of hydro. Almost all of the other half is natural gas. They aren’t getting any coal, which NJ Transit is lying about. There are also renewable alternatives that NJ Transit could use instead of fossil fuels. In Europe, there are trains that are being run off of solar. We could be the first place in the nation to use solar power for trains. They could also use other renewable alternatives like tidal, hydro, or wind power as well as battery storage and flywheels. There are plenty of brownfields that can be linked and used for solar panels, as well as railyards and parking lots at train stations. Using microgrids would not be concentrated at a single point of failure for flooding or any other issue compared to a natural gas plant,” said Tittel.
NJ Transit’s statement on their resiliency fact sheet states that implementing the NJ TRANSITGRID project will provide the path forward for NJ TRANSIT to advance Governor Murphy’s Executive Order 28 for New Jersey’s Clean Energy Economy.
“The plant is only supposed to be running 14 days a year, but then it doesn’t make sense to build a giant, dirty plant instead of buying electricity from the grid. This is not a power plant being built by some polluters, this is being built by the State of New Jersey and NJ Transit with public money. They are deliberately using the pandemic as cover to approve their dirty natural gas plant. They want to call this a resiliency project, but it cannot be a resiliency project if they are burning fossil fuels. “It’s good that Hoboken sent a clear message to NJ Transit and Governor Murphy. This power plant is not being pushed by a private company, it is being pushed by the state. If Governor Murphy wants to deal with Environmental Justice, clean air, and reducing GHG’s, this power plant is just the opposite,” said Jeff Tittel, Director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.