By Samuel Newhouse
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

MONROE PLACE – Residents of Greenpoint and Williamsburg are uniting with the Brooklyn Borough President to prevent a power plant from being built in their neighborhood.

The Transgas Energy Systems power company wants to build a plant that includes a 325-foot smokestack and a 1.8 million gallon oil tank, and is asking a Brooklyn appellate court for permission to build on the waterfront just south of Bushwick Inlet Park.

Transgas Energy Systems is petitioning in the Appellate Division, Second Department to override the decision by the New York State Board on Electric Generation, Siting and the Environment (commonly known as the Siting Board) that dismissed their construction proposal.

“They’re trying to have the Board’s decision dismissing their proposal reversed,� said Susan Kraham, an attorney from the Columbia Law School Environmental Law Clinic who is representing Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Community Board 1, and the Greenpoint-Williamsburg Waterfront Task Force.

“The borough president has adamantly opposed plans by Trangas to build a power plant on Bushwick Inlet. As detailed in the Mayor’s PlanNYC, the site is slated to become a much-needed waterfront park in Northern Brooklyn,� said Mark Zustovich, press secretary for Markowitz.

However, attorney John Dax, who represented Transgas Wednesday in court, said that the company is making efforts to address community concerns about visual impact on the neighborhood waterfront. “The smokestacks wouldn’t look like any smokestacks you’ve ever seen,� Dax said. “They’re designed so they won’t look industrial.�

Transgas is petitioner in this lawsuit disputing the Siting Board’s decision. The Siting Board, the city, and the “Brooklyn parties� – listed above, and including the Borough President’s office – are all respondents in the lawsuit.

Oral arguments were heard Wednesday in the Appellate Division’s historical courthouse on Monroe Place, before a four-judge panel. The panel included Justice Joseph Covello, Justice Peter Skelos, Justice Mark Dillon, and Justice Robert Spolzino, who is leaving the bench soon. See below.

The proposed project site at the waterfront in Williamsburg is near the intersection of North 12th Street and Kent Avenue, and is bordered on the north by Bushwick Inlet and on the west by the East River. No park has yet been built in this area, but one is planned.

Three different designs have been proposed in the area by Transgas, with the first submitted in 2002.

The first was a normal power plant with a 325-foot smokestack, 130-foot air-cooled condenser, and above-ground gas and steam turbines. The second proposal was for an entirely underground facility, with one to four acres above ground for an exhaust tower and other facilities, and four to seven acres dedicated to parkland. A third proposal was an above-ground, electric-only facility that was also rejected.

The first two proposals required steam pipes that the Siting Board said in its decision it did not have the authority to grant. Transgas contests that decision, and argues that the Siting Board must give those proposals another look. The third proposal was thrown out because the Board decided that it was still incompatible with the area.

But Dax said that Transgas proposed the underground plant to address community concerns about impact on the waterfront’s appearance.

“The whole purpose of the underground proposal was to address the concerns of the people that it would be incompatible� and have a negative visual impact, Dax said. “We said okay, let’s take a closer look at this.� However, according to Kraham, building this power plant would interrupt 20 years of community planning for the waterfront.

A plan by the Brooklyn Borough President’s office to increase access to the waterfront and increase park space in Greenpoint and Williamsburg started in the 1980s with community involvement should take precedence over Transgas’s plan, Kraham said.

“To allow an applicant to have their plant in this spot would overrule years of planning,� Kraham said.

Court Bids Farewell Wednesday to Justice Leaving Over Judicial Pay

MONROE PLACE — Justice Robert Spolzino, who heard his last case at the Appellate Division, Second Department in Brooklyn Heights Wednesday, doesn’t mince words when explaining why he’s retiring his judgeship.

“The fact that judges haven’t had a cost-of-living pay increase in the past 10 years has made it impossible for me to stay on the bench,� Justice Solzino told the Eagle.

“I’m sorry to go,� he said. “I’ve enjoyed my tenure at the Appellate Division.�

Justice Spolzino, who has been a judge for eight years and sat in the Appellate Division for five years, will enter private practice in Westchester County at the law firm of Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker, LLP, where he was a partner before joining the judiciary.

At the beginning of a hearing Wednesday in the Appellate Division (see story above), Justice Peter Skelos offered his best wishes to Spolzino on behalf of the court. He called Spolzino a “scholar� and an “outstanding jurist,� and wished him good luck in his new career.

Justice Spolzino will officially leave the bench Sept. 30. He may be called to the Appellate Division as a reserve judge before that date.

— S.N.

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