By MARJORIE NEEDHAM
Artist’s rendering of the proposed Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) Energy Center to be built near Oxford Airport. (Courtesy CPV)
Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) on May 14, 2015, obtained a favorable decision from the Connecticut Siting Council on its proposal to build a 785-MW power plant adjacent to Oxford Airport. The decision came despite protests and hundreds of hours of testimony from area residents opposed to the project.
At least one remaining obstacle may prevent the plant from being built – its hazard to air traffic. And Middlebury’s airport represen-tative, Raymond Pietrorazio, is doing all he can to provide authorities with supporting studies that show the twin-stack power plant close to the runway does, indeed, present a hazard to aircraft. He filed a seven-page petition with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) June 29 asking for discretionary review of an earlier FAA determination of no hazard to air navigation and related FAA reviews for this obstruction evaluation.
Pietrorazio said he is bound and determined to get industrial plumes to be considered in any obstruction evaluation. Currently, the FAA does not consider smoke plumes to be an obstacle to air navigation. Pietrorazio said the conclusions of two previous studies of smoke plumes conflicted with each other; therefore, a third study is needed.
In his petition, Pietrorazio said it is the position of the Town of Middlebury that the FAA is not carrying out its statutory responsibility to the safety of the airspace and that its actions and non-actions are arbitrary, capricious and not in the best interests of flight. He then proceeded to document this statement.
On July 8, 2015, the FAA returned a notice of “valid petition received” to him. It said his petition met the agency’s criteria and they will consider his petition and advise him if the discretionary review is granted or denied.
Pietrorazio also has written to the chair of the Connecticut Airport Authority (CAA) regarding obstruction to the Oxford Airport approach surfaces by electrical transmission lines belonging to Northeast Utilities. He noted it was agreed in 2007 that these lines needed to be buried. His letter then lists 11 obstructions to air traffic at the airport, including the electric lines and the proposed CPV Towantic power plant. He asks what the CAA has done with respect to these obstructions and offers the Town of Middlebury’s assistance to the CAA.
At a protest held at the airport Dec. 29, 2014, pilots said the two 150-foot high power plant stacks roughly a half mile from the runway would be a hazard to air navigation. At that time, Master Certified Flight Instructor Burt Stevens expressed concern for student pilots who would be flying about 700 feet above the power plant. He said pilots from another area could get their plane into an unusual attitude and be unable to recover before crashing the plane.
“I’m not concerned with the physical height of the stacks,” he said. “I’m concerned with what is coming out of the stacks, with the velocity and the volume.” He said the turbulence caused by the effluent is much more significant for small planes like those he uses for instruction.
Pilot Tracy Anastas, who frequently flies out of Oxford Airport, said having the power plant near the airport will affect how she flies into and out of the airport. When she circles to land, if there is low cloud cover and she comes down through that cover as she is flying over the stacks, she said the turbulence from the stacks could force the plane back up into the clouds and she would have to go around again.
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