Proposed York river hydro project: A handout to ‘irresponsible’ Maryland or a way to prevent Texas-like blackouts? - ABC27

Proposed York river hydro project: A handout to ‘irresponsible’ Maryland or a way to prevent Texas-like blackouts? | ABC27

YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) — A bipartisan group of federal, state and local lawmakers representing voters in two counties gathered Monday to oppose a $2.5 billion hydroelectric project in Chanceford Township, York County.

The project’s leader says it would provide hundreds of construction jobs for years, dozens of high-skilled technical jobs forever and prevent blackouts like those that have plagued Texas.

Opponents — including everyone who spoke Monday in Wrightsville, upriver from Chanceford Township — say it would be ugly and destructive and forcibly displace farmers and homeowners, with most costs borne locally but most benefits enjoyed elsewhere.

“It would uproot families, it would impact preserved farms and it would damage the natural beauty that so many of us have worked so hard to preserve along this kind of river,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican whose district includes all of Lancaster County and about half of York County, including the area where the York Energy Storage project would go.

How would it work?

“Two in the morning and no one’s using electricity — they buy cheap electricity, use it to pump water up a hill,” said Rep. Michael Sturla (D-Lancaster). “And then when there’s huge demand for electricity, run back down the hill. It generates electricity. And they sell it at an extremely high price. So this is really just like a hedge fund that’s literally buying cheap electricity and turning around and selling it to storage facilities.”

Sturla said, unlike traditional dams, this project would actually use more energy than it produces — wasteful but profitable because of the price arbitrage.

“That’s not true,” said Bill McMahon, who leads York Energy Storage. “We are going to be using solar and wind energy, which wouldn’t be utilized any other way. It would be turned off and it wouldn’t even be made. And so we’re basically saving that energy and making it useful.”

McMahon said the site “is the best location in eastern United States for a pumped-storage hydroelectric facility,” and 60 million electricity customers would benefit from more reliable service for the cost of about 30 cents per month.

Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York County) said much of the benefit would flow to people in places like Baltimore, whose own state leaders have — in her view — failed them in their quest for conservation.

“Maryland is not ‘green,'” Phillips-Hill said. “Maryland is irresponsible.”

Citing data from Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office, Phillips-Hill said Pennsylvania produces 81 percent more energy than it uses, whereas Maryland uses 25 percent more energy than it produces, a disparity she said will only grow because of a “rush to be green and carbon-free by some arbitrary deadline.”

“Maryland will be shutting down a power plant that generates reliable electricity for the people of Baltimore,” Phillips-Hill said, referring to the Brandon Shores power plant in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

“Holier-than-thou politicians in Maryland are going to gripe about pollution and the need to be green,” she said. “It’s easy to complain when you don’t have to give up anything in your own community, and they do it to the detriment and devastation of pristine, multi-generational farmland that cannot simply be taken anywhere else.”

McMahon conceded land for the project would be taken via eminent domain, but he said property owners “will be paid fair market value or more.”

“The main reason we’re building the project is to balance out power usage so we don’t have blackouts and brownouts like Texas had two years ago.

Sturla, the Lancaster Democrat said modest conservation could achieve the same goal.

So could this “unprecedented” — as Smucker called it — coalition among everyone from conservative Freedom Caucus member Dawn Keefer (R-York & Cumberland) to the left-leaning Lancaster Conservancy portend more cooperation to come on energy policy?

“I think this is pretty much just looking at this particular facility,” Sturla said.

Julie Wheeler (R), York County’s president commissioner, drew a distinction between the hydro project — along a river that already has three energy-producting dams — and energy projects elsewhere in the county.

“We’ve seen an increase in other types of renewable energy products that are market driven and are developed with the participation of the landowner,” Wheeler said. “More specifically, there are several utility-scale solar projects under construction. These projects are consistent with the county’s land-use policy [and are] based upon a financial agreement between the property owners and a development company, not based on condemnation.”