TOWN OF WALLKILL – The
meeting room at Wallkill Town Hall was packed Tuesday night as area residents
renewed their calls for the CPV electric generating facility in nearby
Wawayanda to be shut down.
Citizens raised issues including Impact on health, property values
Testing using diesel fuel has been going on intermittently over the last two weeks with residents from miles away from the electric generating plant complaining of burning eyes, choking and smells from the plumes of gray smoke.
Company officials say the steam is harmless and that diesel fuel is being used because they do not yet to have approval to use natural gas. A pipeline lateral is under construction but the issue remains in court.
Even if natural gas is used in the end, it will be fracked gas from Pennsylvania even though New York State banned the harvesting of fracked gas in the Empire State.
Attorney Michael Sussman found that completely perplexing.
“We can ban fracking because of its injurious and dangerous consequences for public health, but we can promote it and profit from it with this project,” Sussman said. “How is that coherent?”
Residents raised questions from health to declining property values and air quality monitoring of the plant.
