Posted on 03/19/2003 11:59:39 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
SALEM -- City leaders have 6.7 million reasons to fight for Salem Harbor Station.
That's how many dollars the coal- and oil-fired power plant paid the city this year in taxes -- enough money to run the Fire Department and Council on Aging, combined.
Facing a state-imposed deadline to install new pollution-cutting equipment by 2004, the operator of the power plant says it might have to close. Taking the threat seriously, city officials and business leaders say that could have immediate -- and devastating -- economic consequences for Salem.
"What it means to the tax base is huge," Mayor Stanley Usovicz said. "But it's also about the loss of jobs, which has a collateral effect on the economy."
The power plant employs 170 full-time workers, plus some additional temporary workers.
If the plant closes, Salem would get only $2.2 million a year in taxes on the property.
"When that money comes out of the revenue stream, everyone else bears that burden," said Ward 5 Councilor Kim Driscoll. "It would mean significant increases in taxes, or significant reductions (in city services) and probably a combination of the two."
Closing the plant would also have serious consequences for the region's supply of electricity. The Salem plant generates 750 million watts, enough for 750,000 homes.
The state's Division of Energy Resources says new natural gas-fired plants will open in the next few years, but won't be able to make up completely for the loss of Salem's power plant. Natural gas is also more expensive than the oil and coal burned in Salem.
The mayor, meanwhile, believes the 2004 deadline is a death sentence for the power plant.
"Should the '04 decision stand, this plant will more than likely be closed for good," Usovicz said.
In a city accustomed to reinventing itself, the loss of the power plant would be a big hit to its industrial tax base. That means every remaining business and industry would have to pay more, and could put a further squeeze on their ability to compete.
The mayor, several city councilors, business leaders and union officials -- who often are at odds on other issues -- immediately rallied to speak with one voice following Gov. Mitt Romney's announcement of the 2004 cleanup deadline last month.
But environmentalists say Salem officials are shortsighted in backing the company. They say the power plant is an endangered species, and city leaders should start talking about ways to redevelop the property.
Usovicz says that's not so easy: "It's taking an extraordinarily complex process of cleanup and simplifying it to an extent that defies description."
In any case, he notes, Salem would face the economic impact of a shuttered plant for many years before anything could replace it.
'A big hit'
City leaders take pains to point out that they're not against clean air. They want the power plant cleaned up, too. The fight is only about timing -- 2004 vs. 2006.
"It's just vital to Salem's future to have the plant remain here," said Denise Flynn, executive director of the Salem Chamber of Commerce.
Flynn represents more than 300 businesses, including many of the family-owned retail stores that dot the downtown. Many of her members say their businesses are already handicapped by the downtown's tough traffic and scant parking, while Salem's commercial tax rate is higher than Peabody's, next door. Closure of the plant would only add to their tax burdens.
"If the plant is gone, now there are fewer businesses sharing that commercial tax burden," Flynn said. "And that's a big hit. That's not one or two businesses leaving Salem."
City leaders, after watching Salem lose much of its industrial base, say Salem is on the rebound. It has come back before, after losing its maritime trade, then its leather industry.
Now, new apartments stand where factories used to be at the former Parker Brothers and Vincent's Potato Chips sites. City officials fret over the shrinking industrial and commercial base, which is taxed twice as heavily as residential properties. That industrial base is about to get even smaller. This month, Sunburst Fruit Juices is expected to close its bottling factory, located off Highland Avenue.
The power plant, which accounts for 12.8 percent of the city's tax revenue, will pay less -- $4.5 million -- next fiscal year, under a previously negotiated agreement. But even with those taxes decreasing, no development proposal is on the drawing board that could generate enough new taxes to replace the power plant.
The 266 apartments built at the Parker Brothers site, in comparison, will generate an estimated $320,000 in taxes a year. Meanwhile, state leaders are talking about cutting local aid to communities once again, perhaps by 10 to 20 percent.
A better use?
So what are the chances of redeveloping the power plant's 65 waterfront acres?
"The future for development in classic urban areas like Salem is brownfields development," said Seth Kaplan of the Conservation Law Foundation, referring to a program that gives state grants to clean up urban industrial areas. "You have to be willing to recognize the need to clean it up, and you do what you need to do."
But Usovicz says a cleanup would cost $50 million, and then the site is still located next to a sewage treatment plant.
"It wouldn't be million-dollar homes, because no one is going to buy one next to the sewerage plant," he said.
Russ Vickers, president of the Salem Partnership, a group of business and municipal leaders, suggests the property would be suitable only for another industrial use, such as an oil tank farm. And that could be unpopular with neighbors.
"Even the cost of taking the facility down would be expensive, $25 million just to decommission it," said Vickers, who worked as an engineer on power plant construction before moving to Salem. "It's not going to be a forest with some deer running around on it."
Does the Council on Aging have aging stations, aging trucks?
11:20 aging dispatch - aging person has fallen at 3rd and Main and can't get up. Emergency aging truck #5 respond to scene.
11:32 aging dispatch - aging person at Instaburger on Boundary Street is demanding Freedom fries not French fries and refuses to move. Emergency aging truck #8 respond to scene.
An endangered species, eh? Hmmmmm. Well, then, maybe it should be protected...?
... and city leaders should start talking about ways to redevelop the property.
Fine for the property. But how are they going to "redevelop" the people that work there? Those 170 workers probably have good-paying jobs. They are, in many ways, the heart and soul of workaday America. Honest, decent, community-oriented family folks who put in an honest day's work for honest pay, play by the rules, pay their taxes, and raise their children as best they can. Not the kind of people the wackos should be trying to ruin, which they are. Productive workers don't deserve that kind of treatment.
So when the wackos force the closure of the plant, do they just throw away these honest, hard working people, like so much human garbage? Where are they going to go? Hire 170 janitors to clean the apartment buildings they put up on the brownfield next to the sewage plant?
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