Legislators introduce another attempt to kill power plant
BURRILLVILLE – Four Providence legislators have introduced a bill that would prevent the state Energy Facility Siting Board (EFSB) from holding a final hearing or issuing a final decision on Invenergy’s application to build a natural gas-fired power plant in Pascoag if one or more of the agencies requested to submit advisory opinions tell the EFSB that they are unable to form those opinions due to a lack of cooperation or information from the applicant.
The bill, H-5872, was introduced Wednesday by state Reps. Daniel P. McKiernan (D-Dist. 7, Providence), Joseph S. Almeida (D-Dist. 12, Providence), Aaron Regunberg (D-Dist. 4, Providence), Rep. Ramon A. Perez (D-Dist. 13, Providence, Johnston); Rep. Ramon A. Perez (D-Dist. 13, Providence, Johnston) and Rep. William W. O’Brien (D-Dist. 54, North Providence). The proposed legislation has been referred to House Corporations.
Jerry Elmer, a lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, which previously submitted a motion to dismiss the power plant application on the grounds that Invenergy’s application was incomplete, says the new bill clarifies an important point in the 1986 Energy Facility Siting Board Act and that it could kill the power plant proposal.
“The 1986 law was a two-part bargain,” he says. “First, the law created a new, single agency, the Energy Facility Siting Board, to have sole authority to grant or deny siting permits for new power plants. That is, the law took away that power from a wide range of state and municipal agencies that had had that power up until 1986. This, of course, was controversial so the second thing the 1986 law required was that the newly created EFSB must get ‘advisory opinions’ from those state and municipal agencies before the EFSB could issue a ruling on a given power plant proposal.”
In the case of Invenergy, Elmer says, the EFSB requested advisory opinions from 12 state and municipal agencies.
“The trouble was that Invenergy illegally refused to provide required information to many of these agencies,” he says. “In fact, six of these 12 agencies told the EFSB - in writing - that they were unable to provide advisory opinions because Invenergy had illegally refused to provide the agencies with enough data which undermines the entire basis of the Energy Facility Siting Act.”
It was because of those six missing advisory opinions that CLF and the town of Burrillville submitted motion to dismiss the Invenergy docket back in September. Those motions were recently denied by the EFSB
“The EFSB’s unwise decision was, in a hypertechnical sense, not strictly illegal,” Elmer says. “That is because the language of the Energy Facility Siting Act says that when a permit applicant (like Invenergy) illegally withholds information about its proposed power plant, the EFSB may dismiss the application, but it does not have to dismiss it.”.
That’s where the newly introduced bill in the General Assembly comes in, he says.
“This bill makes clear what the General Assembly meant all along – that when a company wants to build a new, dirty, polluting power plant but illegally refuses to provide information to agencies charged with providing advisory opinions, the EFSB must deny the application,” he says. “In other words, the General Assembly does not want to allow illegal, improper end runs around existing laws.”
Elmer says if the bill is enacted, it would not be changing the rules in the middle of the game, but, instead, the General Assembly would be reaffirming the basic rules it enacted in 1986.
“Advisory opinions are a key, central part of the Energy Facility Siting Act and when an applicant, like Invenergy, illegally withholds information and makes it impossible for agencies to even create those opinions, the EFSB cannot properly do its job,” he said
Elmer says unless the bill is enacted the entire 1986 statute becomes “a sham.”
“If applicants like Invenergy know that they can get away with stonewalling - just refusing to provide required information about their proposals - the entire permitting process becomes meaningless,” he says. “This was not what the General Assembly had in mind in 1986 when it created the EFSB.”