News from our President

A Failed Context for Energy Planning Testimony on NYRI Before the Honorable John Hall July2, 2007 Otisville Fire Hall

Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D. President, Orange Environment, Inc.

I am here on behalf of Orange Environment, Inc, a non-profit, tax exempt organization in Orange County this year serving our 25th anniversary.

Over our 25 years, OEI has fought and often won some of the biggest and most significant battles in our region. We do not shy away from difficult fights. Nor have we shied away from this one. We early on joined a coalition formed by the Upper Delaware Preservation Council which has intervened in the permit hearings for this project in opposition.

I might note also that during my own span of Hudson Valley Activism, I go back to the battle against the Marcy South power line. We have been on this battle field before. OEI’s and my experience also includes intervention in the Calpine Power Plant hearings in Wawayanda and consultations on other power plants hearings. We have also been in administrative court in the matter of hazardous industries (RSR) and numerous times on issues relating to solid waste, the most famous being our successful but protracted efforts to bloc expansion and shut down both the Orange County and Al Turi Landfill, Inc. landfills in the Town of Goshen.

We also litigate in civil court, using the Clean Water Act as a framework, as we have on matters such as Orange County Landfill, the Harriman and Wallkill Sewer Treatment Plants. We currently have joined with NRDC in the battle to assure the impacts of the Monticello Casino are fully considered and mitigated before such a facility is approved.

I also want to note my own expertise as a professional as relevant to these proceedings. I am an Environmental Psychologist whose career work has been on the victimization of people due to Environmental change, particularly environmental contamination. I do social impact assessment. I have served as an expert witness in toxic torts. And I regularly publish books and articles relating to the ways that people are victimized by environmental change and the difficulty our system of decision making and justice has in addressing these issues. Most of us are here today for fear of just such victimization and out of concern for just such a lack of representation in the process of decision making.

Among the courses I regularly teach in the Environmental Studies faculty at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where I have been a Professor for 34 years, is a course on Environmental Assessment. I also regularly teach courses on sustainable communities that include consideration of the potential for renewable energy.

All of these factors help inform my perspective on the NYRI siting issue and that of my organization.

The NYRI case is a prime example of the disastrous consequences of our failure to do serious energy planning aimed at reducing our dependence on imported and long distance energy in favor of a policy based upon local renewable energy combined with maximum conservation and avoided use, avoidance of air pollution and greenhouse emissions, decentralization of the grid and greater security, and involving a full integration of sustainable land use planning with energy use. Such planning is effectively mandated by NEPA and SEQRA, as well as the CAA, but rarely addressed. It has been systematically avoided at local and county levels, as well as by New York State. And the Federal government, guided by a short-sighted perpetuation of the current energy model, has abjectly failed to introduce a path toward comprehensive energy planning for this millennium.

The NYRI process follows a path set forth by the federal government to evade a meaningful assessment of impacts, alternatives and mitigations and to avoid making significant changes in our energy path. As a result, it threatens to victimize American citizens directly affected by the transmission corridor as well as all those who depend on the Federal and State governments to execute intelligent and responsive public policy that addresses public interest rather than the welfare of a privileged few.

The NYRI battle must be fought on multiple fronts. First, there is the need to assure that the environmental impact statement and permit review offers a full and thorough assessment of the project’s public benefit versus its adverse environmental impacts, the ability to mitigate those impacts, its alternatives, and the irreversible and irretrievable long as well as short term and cumulative as well as specific consequences. We look to our Governor as well as our representatives to assure that the legal obligation to weigh such issues is fully addressed. And with the full participation of the public.

As a social impact assessor, as well as a community leader, I want the laws of our state and nation to be followed explicitly, allowing for a full hearing and weighing of such impacts. Is it appropriate, for example, to sunder a community in two, as this project will do here in Otisville? Well, this empirical question is a matter for due and full consideration, not a mater to be brushed aside.

Second, there is the battle over the ability of FERC to preempt state and local decision making on this and similar issues. Few of us would disagree that FERC preemption represents not only a threat associated with NYRI, but a fundamental threat to the constitution and our whole system of government. This battle must be fought in Washington, and we are fortunate to have representation of the like of John Hall and Maurice Hinchey to represent us.

The final battle I wish to address follows from the above. This is the battle within our own counties and communities to make a fast and decisive shift toward local renewable energy and a decentralized grid. This battle demands that we block sprawl, require of all new buildings maximum energy conservation plus net energy gain, and that we adopt other sustainable planning goals that dramatically shift the shape of our future communities to diminish energy demand and to meet demand from local sources. The building of the future will be such a net energy plus building. But the buildings of today promise to create a major negative drain on the energy grid, and other energy resources, throughout their entire service life. Energy embedded in building use is our largest source of demand. We must remake this source of problems into a means to solution.

With local rule, our municipalities and their regions---the counties---must take the lead in instituting this change through local plans, laws, code enforcement and incentives. We need to forge a transformation in how we do energy and we need it fast. If our communities take the lead, our ability to argue against NYRI, reauthorization of Indian Point and whatever other energy surprises are headed our way, will be dramatically strengthened.

Managed properly, given the level of mobilization on the MYRI issue, this is an opportunity for social learning about how to address the fundamental underlying problems that feed the current project and a whole host of other ills.

Yes, we must react against NYRI. But, in the end, our best defense is the strong offense of making extended electrical grid decision making passé. We must think clearly about what we want to do, not just what we do not want to be done. Orange Environment has been deeply involved in offering a sustainable alternative vision and empowering its achievement over its 25 years. We are committed to making these changes a reality. Legislation from Congress that funds and enables this effort will pay off in winning and eventually avoiding battles such as the one that brings us all here this evening.

Next Nov 30 and Dec 1, I am chairing a regional conference and expo at Ramapo on how we create a sustainable region, simultaneously moving to green alternatives, including renewable energy, while addressing climate change. I invite you to join this exploration.

In short, I am saying that it is not enough to oppose NYRI. In order to insure against such impositions, we need to take the challenge to make our regions sustainable, to implement renewable energy and to drastically cut our unnecessary uses of energy, to put in place planning that prevents sprawl and promotes community, to develop mass transit and patterns that allow us to use it, and to become empowered and powered at the same time.

This alternative path must be considered as a viable option to NYRI. NEPA, mirrored in New York by SEQRA, requires that issues of energy, long run and cumulative impact, and irreversible and irretrievable consequence be considered in weighing alternatives for this project, and should be considered for all actions that we weigh in our local decision making as well.

Last week, I attended a conference on the solar future of New York City. There, I had a chance to speak with many energy-focused New York activists who echoed, despite their wisdom on renewable energy, the view of downstaters that the ever present fear of blackouts requires new sources of electricity transmission. To the south, a similar sentiment is found with many in New Jersey. Our Congressmen have found resistance from downstate Representatives who support NYRI for this reason. My experience suggests that a summit is needed with activists and Representatives from downstate so that we can educate them on this issue. While we must also be sensitive to their concerns in the process, the point is that third paths must be found to address New York City’s energy needs that are not dependent on NYRI, or at least the proffered versions of NYRI. We must free up downstate representatives to support us by giving them other alternatives frames for considering this issue. We must find a way for the process to become intelligent, rather than locked into fixed answers with disastrous consequences.

In conclusion, we are mobilized, we are networked, and we are organized. The best way to fight NYRI is to use this mobilization, with the help of Congress, to change course to really promote alternatives to the situation in which we find ourselves today. Our power is in not just opposing, but in promoting needed change.