By Shirley Pulawski

September 20, 2007

I met with two officials from NRG on Tuesday - Michael Malecha and Jerry Pittman. They are both based out of Minnestoa, with NRG's development subsidiary and were happy to meet with me and took questions and provided a lot of information on where they are in the process.

The way I understand it, they estimate they are 3-6 months away from filing SEQR provided their research between several engineering firms and contractors shows them it is a viable project. They have been seriously researching for over a year. While they are disappointed that things are not moving along as quickly as they would like, the research has not yet given them any reason to think they can't do it either. Frankly, they seemed more certain that it will go ahead at this meeting than in other phone conversations I have had with them. Part of the plan includes closing Temple from Willow to Rt 5, having the County Home build an access road to Rt 5 instead of Temple and widening and lowering the bridge on Willow just before Rt. 5. They seem to have no concerns about building so close to the County Home, because they seem to think there could never be a need for evacuation. they truly believe that this will be a perfect, clean, odor-free and unnoticeable plant. I replied that I'm sure the man who built the Titanic was equally convinced of it worthiness as well.

Fagen and ICM are the companies that have been contracted to actually do the building. I was told that Fagen is a great choice because they build more than any other company. This appears to be true, except from my research, it seems that a lot of the plants on their project list are under development and not actually built. According to Malecha, they are also very focused on reducing emissions, odors, volatile organic compounds and so forth. I did manange to find records of some that are in operation, and yes, there are odor and noise compaints. You can read the testimony of a woman who lives near the Badger State ethanol Plant that Fagen built by clicking here. Here is the story of another plant that Fagen built, and the news is not good.

This is also NRG's first move into ethanol - in other words, they have no prior experience with it as a company. Malecha does have experience with building and developing plants but has only been with NRG for a year or so from what I understand. They started out researching for five possible plants, but have already dropped three of them. They are solely focused on buildng ones near their existing coal fired power plants so that they can use the steam and build these ethanol plants without having to build a coal fired burner for them. It's a great plan, but one that could ruin life for us if it means our entire area smells like an old tavern or if an accident or leak or ammonia spill means the County Home has to be evacuated and can't be in a timely fashion. Malecha proudly said that they've built them within a 1/4 mile from schools and didn't see any need for concern over the proximity to the County Home and I found that disturbing.

Further, let's assume that NRG and the companies developing this project do everything perfectly and we don't have odor or harmful pollutants, it has no accidents or leaks, etc. What happens if they decide to sell it to someone else?

Please pass this information on to any one else who might be interested, and please start asking your elected officials where they stand on this and encourage them to ask questions and get involved. Once the SEQR is filed, things will happen very quickly. The sad thing is that the decision making will solely come down to the board of the Town of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, the burden will fall on all surrounding communities.

We may get lucky and NRG may decide the project is not worth pursuing, but I am not willing to sit idly by and hope for the best.