Community Corner

Power to the People: LIPA Repowering Campaign Goes Grassroots

Residents form their own group to bring a local voice to the debate.

Organized by residents who are concerned about the plight of Port Jefferson’s power plant, a grassroots movement is taking things to the next level at on Saturday to present ideas on how to get their concerns out to the right people in power, so to speak.

The group has yet to decide on an official name and they are the first to admit they’re not exactly media savvy but their message is clear: the National Grid-owned plant must be repowered, or else.

With the rise in grassroots political organizations garnering media attention from the Tea Party to the Occupy Wall Street protesters, these locals hope to give a voice to a problem that they say might destroy the seaside village.

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Separate from the village’s , the group has been meeting in backyards and going up and down streets knocking on doors to motivate neighbors to get together.

“Residents have no voice,” said Maureen Dowling, one of three organizers of the group that also includes Bruce Miller and Lisa Jaeger.

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So far, they’ve been successful in getting people to come out to their informal meetings but aside from Dowling, Miller and Jaeger, no one else has been ready to officially commit.

“Lots of members come to meetings,” said Dowling. “A hundred people come but no one puts their name to it.”

A majority of the people they talk to want to see the plant repowered.

“We want to repower that plant,” she said. “We have a brownfield there.”

National Grid–the British company that owns the actual power plant and leases it to LIPA under a special agreement–has not been a good neighbor, according to Dowling. The repowering grassroots group thinks one good solution would be for a company to come in, modernize the plant and start generating electricity from it, selling the power to LIPA and paying taxes on the actual value of the property.

In its tax grievance LIPA and National Grid argue that since the plant is antiquated and only running at a small percentage of its capacity, they are over paying on property taxes.

The organizers say that they’re realistic. They don’t expect the rest of Long Island to subsidize their school taxes and are willing to deal with paying a little more but such a dramatic increase all at once is unfathomable.

The trio sent a letter to local newspapers imploring people to attend the meeting this Saturday and outlined their concerns. First and foremost is the potential impact almost doubling the property taxes residents pay will have on the village.

“We’re facing as early as Nov. 2012, a 67 to 80 percent increase in taxes,” said Dowling in an interview. Along with a , the group says that real estate values will plummet.

The prospect should be enough to motivate village residents but Dowling said that the general consensus is that something will be done about it before the worst of it comes to pass.

“Part of the thinking in the community is that this is not going to happen,” she said. “We’ll be bailed out like manna from heaven.”

A biblical analogy may not be that far off the mark. Dowling is concerned that if nothing is done to repower the plant, the result on Port Jefferson as a village will be apocalyptic.

“I’m envisioning a ghost town,” she said. “I don’t know how we will survive it.”

Click here for more stories about repowering the Port Jefferson power plant.


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