A California company has proposed building a hydroelectric power plant underground on Ashokan Reservoir property, catching New York City, which owns the land, by surprise.
A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission notice about the proposal by Premium Energy Holdings of Walnut, Calif., was issued Feb. 11 and gives interested parties 60 days to comment.
Premium says on its website that electricity generated by the plant, which would be near the west end of the reservoir in the town of Olive, would be sent to Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp.'s substation on Hurley Avenue in Kingston and used at times of peak power demand.
The plant would be powered by water from the Ashokan that first would be sent to a new, smaller reservoir that Premium plans to create at a higher elevation. Water from the new reservoir then would flow down to Premium's generating facility.
The power needed to initially send the water uphill would be generated by Premium's plant.
“The ... project would use the existing Ashokan Reservoir as a lower pool and proposes a new upper reservoir in the Catskill Mountains to serve as upper pool,” the company states. “The filling of these reservoirs would be done through the Esopus Creek and the existing Ashokan Reservoir.”
Premium hopes to create the power plant 200 to 300 feet below ground on one of three sites — two near state Route 28, and one on the north side of the Ashokan's west basin.
Sites under consideration for the supplemental reservoir, which could cover as much as 313 acres, are in West Shokan, near Moon Haw Road; Woodland Valley, near Muddy Brook Road; and Chichester, off of state Route 214.
Water from the new reservoir would reach the power plant through a tunnel.
While New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) property would be used for the generating plant itself, Premium's 28-page application does not identify specific parcels for the reservoirs.
Premium's application says the power plant would generate 2,800 megawatts of electricity. Eight-hundred megawatts would go to the Central Hudson substation during 12-hour periods when demand is high; the rest would be used to power the plant itself.
New York City officials were not told in advance about the application, a DEP spokesman said.
“DEP was surprised to learn this week about a ... proposal for a pumped-storage hydroelectricity plant that would rely on water from Ashokan Reservoir to generate power,” Adam Bosch said in an email.
“Zero contact was made with DEP about this proposal,” Bosch wrote. “We were surprised to learn about it on Tuesday, when Ulster County sent a digital copy of the filing to us. I mean that very literally. We were totally in the dark. We had no inkling of this.”
The notice from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission notes the application filed by Premium Energy does not give the company the right to go onto city property or conduct any work.
If the city does not agree to the project, Premium could seek to have the project designated as necessary by the New York Independent System Operators and then have it approved by the state Public Service Commission through eminent-domain proceedings.
Officials with Premium Energy were not immediately available for comment Friday.
Comments of less than 6,000 characters can be made at ferconline.ferc.gov/QuickComment.aspx. Comments also can be mailed to Kimberly D. Bose, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 888 First St. NE, Room 1A, Washington, D.C. 20426. The first page of any filing should include docket number P-15056-000.