Special Newark Council meeting on Data Centers power buying deal canceled

A special meeting of the Newark City Council was canceled after a municipality utility power group postponed its Wednesday session.

Three Newark City Council members asked for the special meeting asking for a resolution to delay a Wednesday meeting of the Delaware Municipal  Electric Corp. that might lead to that organization buying electric power from proposed natural gas power that would be operated by the Data Centers. DEMEC provides power for Newark’s electric utility.

Newark is the largest shareholder in the power corporation. DEMEC agreed today to delay the meeting until later in the month. As a result, the resolution will be considered at the regular May 12 City Council meeting. 

The Data Centers project is bitterly opposed by a group of environmental activists and neighbors known as Residents Against the Newark Power plant. 

A University of Delaware committee is also taking a look at the $1 billion project and it was reported that the University of Delaware Faculty Senate voted unanimously against the project citing neighborhood opposition and other factors. 

The citizen  group has staged demonstrations at events that included tours by prospective University of Delaware students  and their parents and have even dressed up pets in No Newark Power Plant colors.

There have been criticisms by proponents of the project about the hard line taken by opponents and overall lack of common courtesy that has not normally been seen in other disputes. The unyielding approach seemed to carry over from a previous dispute over a proposed Wawa store. The harshness of criticism in emails and calls contributed to a decision by then-Mayor Vance Funk to resign his post. Some opponents to the Wawa on the west side of the city moved over to the No Power plant group.

Ken Grant, spokesman for The Data Centers, a start-up company based in West Chester, Pa., issued the following statement: “The Data Centers understands that there has been a lot of misinformation spread about this project and that the Newark City Council has been dealing with an inordinate amount of speculation from a small group of individuals. If the city council feels the need to hold an emergency meeting and debate a resolution, then it has every right to do so. We are confident that any fair, thorough, and reasonable investigations will find the same results we’ve seen from Combined Heat and Power facilities in the middle of the University of Texas, the middle of Boston, and every other populated area with a CHP facility – namely that this is one of the cleanest, most reliable forms of energy generation available today.”

The project would be built on a corner of the University of Delaware’s STAR campus, the site of the former Chrysler Assembly plant. Sponsors of the resolution wanted to review a copy of the proposed agreement. A copy of the draft is available here as Exhibit A.

Residents Against the Newark Plant have lost challenges on whether the Data Centers project has adequate zoning. Of late, the group has argued that the power plant side of the project would be a bigger polluter than the Chrysler plant.