The Department of Environmental Protection found a recent environmental justice law that bars polluting projects in overburdened communities will not bar the construction of a controversial backup power plant in Newark’s Ironbound section.

The decision is a boon to the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, which for a decade has urged the construction of backup power generation at a wastewater treatment plant to keep the facility running during severe storms, but it is a blow to community advocates who have opposed the project for nearly as long.

“Will some say this is too far? Sure. Will some say it’s not enough? Absolutely,” Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn LaTourette told reporters Thursday. 

The department’s decision clears a path for the agency to issue draft permits for the project in mid-August that could see it win final permits in early 2025. A public comment period would come following the draft permits and is expected to run through the end of September.

Community advocates have opposed plans for a backup generation plant, charging it would further overburden a community already abutting three power plants and questioning officials’ claim that the plant would only operate during severe storms that disrupt electricity powering the existing facility.

Maria Lopez-Nuñez, deputy director of organizing and advocacy at the Ironbound Community Corporation, called the decision a “huge betrayal of environmental justice communities.”

“We know communities like ours are subject to political whims, so it’s very likely that this power plant will be built, and it will be built to run not just during emergencies,” she said.

LaTourette on Thursday reiterated the plant would only operate during severe storms but added officials could run it once a month to ensure it still works. Conditions in the decision bar the facility from selling power back to the grid or using the backup plant to cut costs for routine operations.

“This is not to be a revenue-generating function,” LaTourette said.

The conditions also require the facility to stand up at least 5 megawatts of solar generation and battery storage to jump-start power generation following a blackout.

Activists had called for the backup generation plant to draw all its power from renewable sources, but LaTourette said the review found renewable sources could not feasibly power wastewater treatment during severe storms.

Regulators at the Board of Public Utilities in 2022 rejected renewable energy for a since-abandoned NJ Transit backup power plant in Kearny, finding they would require more space than the site could provide and prove too unreliable to depend on during inclement weather.

The Ironbound project can proceed despite a 2020 environmental justice law that requires state environmental officials to deny applications for polluting projects in historically overburdened community, with officials arguing that parts of the agreement will require the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission to cut emissions from existing equipment.

Among other things, the decision requires the sewerage commission to remove aging boilers and generators and impose new air pollution controls on other existing equipment. The actions would reduce emissions from the plant to below existing levels even after the backup plant is complete, LaTourette said.

“Because of that, there is no disproportionate impact,” the commissioner said. “We have avoided that outcome, which is the purpose of the [environmental justice] law, and therefore the relief available for a compelling public interest needn’t be reached.”

The project will only proceed if the sewerage commission accepts the conditions, and LaTourette indicated it would. And it will require the commission to examine the feasibility of transitioning the plant to hydrogen or another renewable source.

That requirement did little to hearten Lopez-Nuñez, who warned residents would physically obstruct construction at the plant if the commission votes to begin building next year.

“If they vote to move a construction process, they will be met with bodies,” she said. “The community will resist this, so they will have to bulldoze over the residents of the Ironbound Community Corporation and Greater Newark [Conservancy] and all our friends. People have come out in the hundreds to oppose this plant.”

The backup plant is meant to ensure the facility operates during severe storms that could otherwise force it to divert sewage into waterways. Severe flooding and power outages during Hurricane Sandy forced the treatment plant to dump roughly 840 million gallons of raw sewage into the Passaic River and Newark Bay.