Last night, the Cranbury Township Committee voted unanimously to pass a resolution opposing the proposal by Competitive Power Ventures (CPV) to build a new gas-fired power plant in Woodbridge. With this action, they became the eleventh elected government body in the state to pass a resolution calling on the Murphy administration to reject the dirty energy project.

CPV has proposed building a new 630-megawatt gas power plant in the Keasbey section of Woodbridge, a community already overburdened with pollution. If approved, this new facility – which would be adjacent to an existing CPV plant – could emit nearly 2.3 million tons of greenhouse gasses each year, along with hundreds of tons of toxic air pollutants – including carbon monoxide, ammonia, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfuric acid, and lead.

The dirty power plant has generated strong community opposition; resolutions opposing it have passed in Sayreville, Edison, Highland Park, Hoboken, Perth Amboy, Franklin, Rahway, and South Brunswick, as well as at the Highland Park Board of Education and the Somerset County Commissioners.

The Cranbury Township Committee’s vote also comes after the Township’s Environmental Commission and its Board of Health came out against the plant in 2021.

“The creation of new fossil fuel power plants flies in the face of a key goal of Governor Murphy’s Energy Master Plan: getting to 100% clean energy by 2050,” said Paul Mullen, Chairman of the Cranbury Environmental Commission.

“We are concerned that this new plant will add another major source of air pollution to Middlesex County, much of which has been designated as ‘overburdened communities’ under New Jersey’s environmental justice law, which requires that the environmental and public health impacts of this type of facility must be evaluated when reviewing permit applications,” said Laura Zurfluh, Chair of the Cranbury Township Board of Health.

Of the local governments opposing the power plant, six are located in Middlesex County, which is already home to six fossil fuel power plants and has consistently received an F rating from the American Lung Association for unhealthy levels of ground level ozone.

“Dumping millions more tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere would be a terrible move in the wrong direction.  It’s encouraging to see towns all over New Jersey taking a stand and calling on the governor to live up to his rhetoric on the climate crisis,” said Charlie Kratovil, Central Jersey Organizer at Food & Water Watch.