More than a week has passed since Tom Macaulay and Robert Votaw, doing business in New York as Glenville Energy Park, filed their Preliminary Scoping Statement with the state of New York. Vermont newspapers have not reported the power plant developers' activities.

VCE has obtained a copy of the 1 1/4-inch thick document. It contains no information about financing for the $300,000,000 project. New York law does not require disclosure until the time of filing, estimated to be within 9 months. Earth Tech, a company that has prepared numerous power plant applications in the region, prepared the pre-filing.

Of special interest to Vermonters is that the proposed 520 megawatt facility in Glenville/Scotia, New York is 75 miles from the Lye Brook Wilderness Area, a Class 1 Wilderness Area. In order for the power plant to be built, it will have to obtain approval from the federal Land Manager, which in this case is the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Their primary mission is to protect these federal lands from degradation. Since Lye Brook is a federal Class I Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) area, the Stringent Class PSD increments for NO₂, SO₂ and PM10 all apply, and compliance with those limits will have to be shown in the permit application given to NYS DEC. The applicant will also have to do an analysis of potential visibility impacts on the Lye Brook area and show no impact. VEPH will also have to do the same for the proposed Rutland and Bennington power plants with respect to Lye Brook Wilderness Area, although each siting would be judged as a separate and unique case.

Vermont has some of the cleanest air in the nation. It is cited as one of the top reasons people come to Vermont. To make our air even cleaner, in 1998 the state of Vermont joined with 7 other Northeast states in filing a lawsuit to require dirty Midwest power plants to reduce their emissions of nitrogen oxides, a key ingredient of smog.

So it is surprising to learn that in 1996, Vermont filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency formally seeking a waiver from the NOx offset requirement portion of New Source Review requirements applicable in the Northeast Ozone Transport Region. In 1999, Vermont officials threatened to file a lawsuit with the EPA to require them to take action on the NOx offset waiver petition. VCE has obtained a copy of the petition, which is not written in a manner that is easily understood by a non-technical audience. We will attempt to explain it in simple terms.

The purpose of the Nitrogen Oxide offset waiver petition is to allow more production of Nitrogen Oxides from stationary sources within Vermont. Power plants are stationary sources of Nitrogen Oxides. The two natural gas power plants proposed for Bennington and Rutland would produce about 700 tons of Nitrogen Oxides.

In 1990, stationary sources in Vermont produced 575 tons of Nitrogen Oxides. Under the Clean Air Act as Amended in 1990, any new NOx production must be offset at a rate of 1.15 to 1.0. It would be impossible to obtain offsets for 700 tons of new NOx in Vermont, and Vermont does not have a mechanism for trading offsets, as do other states.

The 1996 petition requests stationary sources in Vermont be allowed to add 1725 new tons of NOx, for a total of 2300 tons. The argument put forward in Vermont's request for a waiver of NOx requirements is that whatever Vermont produces will not move out of Vermont, and if it does it will have a miniscule effect on the large quantities of NOx produced by surrounding states. The 1.15 to 1.0 NOx offset requirement is viewed as a significant impediment to new economic development and the flexibility of existing sources in Vermont to expand.

Another way of looking at it is that we are not consuming our fair share of pollution. Vermont is part of the Ozone Transport Region that includes surrounding states that produce large quantities of NOx. The state argues that quadrupling Vermont's NOx production will not affect air quality in the Ozone Transport Region because the new pollution will stay within Vermont. That means that if this waiver is granted and new stationary sources of NOx are permitted, Vermont's air will become more polluted.

State agency officials, state energy plans, and power plant developers all indicate that these power plants have been in the works for 10 years. A credible argument could be made that the NOx offset waiver was applied for to accommodate these natural gas power plants. These power plants could not be built in Vermont unless the NOx offset waiver is granted.