Bronx’s Asthma Alley Protests Plans to Extend Power Plant Permits
CityLimits
By Caroline Spivack
If you’ve turned on an air conditioner or flipped a light switch during a sweltering summer day in the Bronx, you’ve used energy from two natural gas power plants that were originally supposed to close over a decade ago.
In 2001, the two Harlem River Yard units were located in the Port Morris area of the South Bronx with the promise that they would be temporary. Now, 14 years later, the New York Power Authority, which own and operate the plants, wants to extend the facilities’ operating permits that are set to expire on Jan. 9.
But South Bronx Unite, a coalition of residents, is fighting back. The group is petitioning to have the plants shuttered because, the coalition says, they contribute to the borough’s notoriously bad air quality.
“But the pollution is not restricted to the Bronx. The wind blows the pollutants in all directions,” says Frank Eadie, chair of the energy committee of the Sierra Club’s New York City branch. “We need to deal with the whole city, the whole state, not just the local people around that particular site. It’s not just a single borough that’s involved here, it’s all of us.”
