Legal fight over Burlington City waterfront control draws in PSE&G - Burlington County Times

Legal fight over Burlington City waterfront control draws in PSE&G

PSE&G enters court fight to stop Burlington City seizing facilities
Joseph P. Smith

BURLINGTON CITY — The state’s largest natural gas and electric utility has joined a legal fight to stop the city from seizing waterfront properties that host an electrical generating station and an electrical switching station that are considered critical regional facilities.

Public Service Electric & Gas was approved on March 29 to join a lawsuit that Parkway Generation Operating LLC filed in January. The case is in Burlington County Superior Court before Judge Jeanne Covert.

“The PSE&G Switching Station conducts both electric Transmission and Distribution functions,” the PSE&G filing states. “The … Station continues to be necessary for PSE&G to discharge its duty to provide safe, adequate, and proper service to 2.3 million electric customers in New Jersey, including customers within the City.”

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Parkway is the major waterfront landowner in the dispute, with about 63 acres off the Delaware River at 901 West Broad Street. It operates the 168-megawatt, “black start” Burlington Station that it bought from PSEG Fossil LLC in early 2022.

“Black start” means the station can restart independently, something many stations cannot do. In a major outage, such plants are critical to reenergizing a grid.

Under the 2022 sale, PSE&G retained permanent control of roughly 16 acres and the switching station. The utility asked to join the litigation to protect that interest.

PSE&G did a major upgrade to the switching facility in 2021, part of a multi-year, phased project to strengthen the electrical system across Burlington and two other counties at a cost of more than $700 million.

Parkway and now PSEG say the city has no actual legal grounds to take the properties.

PSE&G calls “misguided” a city-funded study that purports to establish grounds for a city takeover. The utility says the study “completely fails” to consider the switching station, while its claim that the Parkway station is not in operation is not accurate.

“The … Station serves as a critical connection point for the Burlington Station as well as six, 230-kilovolt (“kV”) lines coming in, connecting PSE&G’s service territory to the north and to the south in New Jersey,” attorney Natalie Dallavalle states.

Dallavalle states the switching station connects with PECO Energy Company, making it important to reliable energy supply in Pennsylvania. She adds that relocating the facility would cost “tens of millions of dollars.”

Joe Smith is a N.E. Philly native transplanted to South Jersey more than 30 years ago, keeping an eye now on government in South Jersey. He is a former editor and current senior staff writer for The Daily Journal in Vineland, Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, and the Burlington County Times.

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