Dangerous and unwarranted assaults are being launched on Delaware industry at a time when jobs are desperately needed.Themal's "dangerous and unwarranted assault" # 1 conflates imaginary industry-killing enviros with citizen activists who demand that DNREC follow the law in seeking a proper Coastal Zone permit for PBF Energy's Crude-By-Rail-By-Barge operation. Plus, the CZA complaints aren't related to Delaware jobs but to PBF Energy's New Jersey, jobs regardless of the spin that the one depends on the other.
First came legal actions that could result in a shutdown of the PBF refinery in Delaware City as the Delaware Sierra and Audubon groups challenged its plans to bring in crude oil by rail and to barge some to another Delaware River refinery.
Now come even more outrageous complaints about a proposed data processing center that will be supported by power-generating turbines in Newark. Data Centers LLC has chosen what is now known as the STAR (Science, Technology and Advanced Research) campus of the University of Delaware to build a 900,000-squarefoot complex. This used to be the site of the Chrysler Assembly Plant, which built millions of cars and even tanks there for nearly six decades.
Rep. John Kowalko, the legislator representing the area, complains that the proposed new data center and powcontrols er plant is being built “in the middle of 30,000 residents.”
Did he think the 30,000 residents didn’t know the Chrysler plant was in the same middle? Or that many of them lost their jobs when Chrysler closed in 2008?
At times Chrysler’s sprawling facility had enforcement problems, as when OSHA fined it $1.5 million for excessively exposing many of its 4,000 workers to lead and arsenic. Did any of those 30,000 residents want it closed then or the violations just corrected?
The most outrageous objections are attributed to Amy Roe, who made it a point to say she was speaking as one of the 30,000 and not as the conservation chair for the Delaware Chapter of the Sierra Club, which is engaged in that legal battle with the refinery.
Her complaint is that the proposed Data Centers facility will impact citizens with “reduced air quality, lower property values, consumption of our water supply, noise and untold other negative outcomes.” Of course Chrysler never had any of those potential effects.
If Kowalko and people like Roe succeed in blocking this project, Delaware stands to lose 290 full-time and 50 part-time jobs, according to Data Centers. What about the taxes Newark and the state would get? The state thinks so positively of the idea it is providing a $7.5 million grant to get natural gas and water to the site.
When the university bought the 272 Chrysler acres along South College Avenue and the Christina Parkway, it set out to convert it into an industrial, research and educational hub. The first company that came to the site was Bloom Energy, producing fuel-cell energy boxes. Now Data Centers has signed a long-term lease for another 43 acres.
The other major attack on Delaware’s economic future comes from two environmental organizations, the Delaware Sierra Club and Audubon Society. Their actions must remind us of the 18th-century Luddites in England who fought against industrialization. It’s a little ironic perhaps that Russ Peterson once was president of the National Audubon Society after serving as Delaware’s governor and as the father of the 1971 Coastal Zone Act, now being evoked to block production at the refinery.
When PBF bought the shuttered refinery, it promised extra pollution and environmental improvements. The difficulty in keeping to that promise was seen in the $529,000 in penalties and fees announced last week by the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
The state, environmental lobbyists and Delaware City residents should certainly be keeping a close watch on the refinery. But it is wrong to threaten its lifeline, the crude shipped from Canadian shale oil fields. Would it be better if there were a pipeline?
Everyone should concentrate on making sure the delivery by rail is safe, that the containers and rails are maintained, that those long trains don’t permanently snafu area traffic, and that the same caution is exercised on the barging that has been for years at the safe oil lightering operations near Big Stone Beach.
As the United States relies ever more on domestic oil production, and I include Canada in “domestic,” these groups are attacking an important pillar in reducing the need for importing foreign products.
Themal freely espouses less-than-factual State Chamber talking points where any excuse for business-bringing-jobs warrants serious breach and exceptions under the law?
Or the killing of billions of fish, for that matter......
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Sierra Club and Audubon volunteers have a message for the refinery and DNREC:
Stop killing our fish! 2013 is time to install a closed-loop cooling system!
But for this post, the focus is with Themal's "dangerous and unwarranted assault" # 2 - "outrageous complaints about a proposed data processing center."First off, we city folk do appreciate Roe and Kowalko as representative of our interests as well as Paul Baumbach who writes -
I really want to draw attention to the preliminary plans to build a power plant at the old Chrysler site. Please keep tuned in on this issue.
I really want to draw attention to the preliminary plans to build a power plant at the old Chrysler site. Please keep tuned in on this issue.
Themal was responding to this article: (News Journal) Melissa Nann Burke reports ~ Newark airs concerns over data center - Facility planned at Chrysler site focus of talks
NEWARK — Residents, including state Rep. John Kowalko, voiced concerns Monday night about how a proposed data- processing center and its associated power-generating turbines would affect noise, air pollution and quality of life in Newark. “We’re talking 248 megawatts,” said Kowalko, D-Newark South. “What we’re proposing, what we’re allowing to happen here, is plopping a major power-generation facility in the middle of 30,000 residents.”
Amy Roe, who lives within a mile of the site, asked City Council to hold a public meeting, where she said “the facts can be presented to the citizens who will be impacted by reduced air quality, lower property values, consumption of our water supply, noise, and untold other negative outcomes.” City Manager Carol Houck promised that the city will have a public meeting once it receives final site plans. “Whether it’s going to be 248 [megawatts], I don’t know at this point in time. It keeps getting delayed. They are still working on financing,” Houck said. “Otherwise, we’re going to invite people in, and they’ll ask questions, and we’ll have to say, ‘We don’t know.’ I don’t like to waste people’s time like that.”
Roe, who received copies of internal emails and documents from the city, said officials have been negotiating to bring the project to Newark for more than a year with little or no public discussion.Roe highlighted the decision by city staff that electrical generation at the site would not require council approval because it falls within the categories of what’s permitted under city code. Power generation would be “incidental and subordinate” to the purpose and use of the main building, Solicitor Bruce Herron wrote in a July 10 memo to the mayor and council. “To characterize this power plant as a minor consequence without intention or calculation is a gross misrepresentation of the facts,” said Roe, who attended the meeting with her father, also a Newark resident. “There is nothing subordinate about the power plant. Instead, after all reading of the information provided to me in my [records] request, the data center is subordinate to the power plant.” Roe was speaking as a citizen and not in her capacity as conservation chair for the Delaware chapter of the Sierra Club, she said.
Houck noted that the developer will be required to met federal, state and local environmental regulations. Paul Foster, environmental program manager for the state, said the Division of Air Quality has met once with The Data Centers to broadly discuss the project but has not received an application for an air quality permit. “It’s going to be big. It’s probably going to trigger a lot of requirements,” such as offsets to balance the discharge of emissions, Foster said. “There’s nothing this size elsewhere in the state. A few emergency generators, maybe, but nothing this size.” If the required permits and approvals are granted, construction would begin in early 2014 at the site, known as the STAR campus of the University of Delaware, said Andy Lubin, UD’s director of real estate. The university bought the 272-acre property from a bankrupt Chrysler in 2009. The Data Centers have a long-term lease with UD for 43 acres – about 16 percent of the site.
Why are we elite socialists for wanting to protect our property values and sanity? Chrysler, while being noisy some of the time, was essentially a good neighbor, but the UD is now going into their third year of construction with no end in sight, and no consideration for the people who live in the surrounding community. We get no input into what is built back there and have no idea what sort of emissions are going to be put out there. I am sorry the GM plant is not in use, the Fisker deal was never a good idea in my book and I don't believe the Bloom was either - but time will tell.I just want to applaud Senator Kowolko, who always is looking out for his constituents. If you ask him to look into something - he does it. It is much appreciated.
I also spoke with Amy Roe this morning who noted that Chrysler's auto assembly can hardly be compared to having a power plant next door!
The planned STAR Campus' 248 megawatt power generation is half the output of the nearby Conowingo Dam Hydroelectric Power Plant and a quarter of the output of south Jersey's Salem Nuclear Power Plant. The primary release from gas power plants is nitrogen oxide, a precursor to surface-level ozone.
New Castle County is already in nonattainment status for air quality. How can a power plant of this size legally even get a permit to operate here?
Also, see: Data Center as business model:Data Center or Wildcat Power Utility?
"When the centers opened in the 1990s as quaintly termed “Internet hotels,” the tenants paid for space to plug in their servers with a proviso that electricity would be available. As computing power has soared, so has the need for power, turning that relationship on its head: electrical capacity is often the central element of lease agreements, and space is secondary.
A result, an examination shows, is that the industry has evolved from a purveyor of space to an energy broker — making tremendous profits by reselling access to electrical power, and in some cases raising questions of whether the industry has become a kind of wildcat power utility."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/technology/north-jersey-data-center-industry-blurs-utility-real-estate-boundaries.html?pagewanted=all
A result, an examination shows, is that the industry has evolved from a purveyor of space to an energy broker — making tremendous profits by reselling access to electrical power, and in some cases raising questions of whether the industry has become a kind of wildcat power utility."http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/technology/north-jersey-data-center-industry-blurs-utility-real-estate-boundaries.html?pagewanted=all
Meanwhile, Newark City Council reduces public comment time by 40% without any public discussion. Amy Roe remarks ~At last night's meeting I learned that I only had 3 minutes to speak
in public comment period. It used to be 5 minutes, so I asked for
clarification. I have it confirmed (see below) that the City of
Newark voted on May 13, 2013 to lower the public comment period from 5
minutes to 3 minutes, a 40% reduction.
This was an agenda item that was not open for public comment at the meeting.
Listening to the audio recording of the meeting, this occurred without
any public discussion.
Thanks,
Amy
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Renee K. Bensley; RBensley@newark.de.us
Date: Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:10 AM
Subject: RE: Public comment period
Attached is a copy of the resolution that changed the length of the
public comment period. Below is the section of the minutes from May
13, 2013 where that resolution was voted upon. The minutes for the
entire meeting as well as the audio recording can be found on our
website at http://www.cityofnewarkde.us/Archive.aspx?AMID=31.
24. 8. ITEMS SUBMITTED FOR PUBLISHED AGENDA:
A. Council Members
1. Resolution 13-__: Amending the Rules of Procedure for the 2013-2014 Council Year
02:40:27
MOTION BY MR. CLIFTON, SECONDED BY MR. MARKHAM: TO ACCEPT THE AMENDED
RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR THE 2013-2014 COUNCIL YEAR.
MOTION PASSED UNANIMOUSLY. VOTE: 6 to 0.
Aye – Clifton, Funk, Hadden, Markham, Morehead, Tuttle.
Nay – 0.
Absent – Chapman.
(RESOLUTION NO. 13-T)~*~
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