Plans dropped for oil-fueled power plant in Chelsea
By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff
Cape Wind developer Jim Gordon today abandoned his plan to build an oil-fueled power plant in Chelsea, a project that has drawn harsh community opposition.
In a notice filed today with the state Energy Facilities Siting Board, attorneys for Chelsea Energy LLC -- a subsidiary of Gordon's Energy Management Inc. -- said the company "no longer intends to develop the project at the proposed site in Chelsea" and was withdrawing its applications for state approval.
Gordon's company was proposing to build a 250-megawatt power plant, big enough to serve about 180,000 average-sized homes, that would be run no more than 1,600 hours a year to cover times of peak electric demand such as hot summer afternoons or winter evenings.
Energy Management argued that the plant would improve, not worsen, air pollution because it would offset the need for dirtier-burning oil and coal power plants in Everett and Salem to run at certain times in the summer to cover electricity demand spikes.
But environmentalists and Chelsea political and community leaders disputed those claims and aggressively opposed the plant, in part because it would be less than 1,000 feet from an elementary school.
In May, state Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian A. Bowles warned that the Chelsea project "appears unlikely" to be able to get state environmental approval.
Energy Management had no immediate comment on whether it planned to consider other locations in the Boston area for the power plant. Another Gordon company has been pushing for years to build the 130-turbine Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, which has drawn both support and criticism from environmentalists and Cape residents.
