Executives of the company developing a much-contested power plant in the town of Oxford have commissioned a study to explore the potential environmental impact of the natural gas-burning plant.
"This is not your grandfather's power plant," said Braith Kelly, executive vice president of Competitive Power Ventures, the developer of the Towantic Energy Center.
According to the University of Connecticut's Center for Economic Analysis, the power plant would create an $8 billion increase in Connecticut's real estate-related gross domestic product, in addition to an increase in income.
The project is expected to cost about $430 million to complete and will be located several miles from Interstate 84 in Oxford.
Fred Carstensen, who conducted the UConn study, said the project would create about 1,800 total jobs, but only 50 of them would be directly related to the plant. That number does not include temporary construction employment.
"All the rest are induced or indirect, as we call them, which is the services that will be brought to them by the plant, and then all of the ways in which people will spend their money," Carstensen explained during a closed-door press conference unveiling the study Tuesday morning.
CPV paid UConn about $65,000 to conduct the study.
Critics of the project have cited a list of concerns. The original proposal called for a 500-megawatt power plant, but the current, updated proposal calls for 800 megawatts.
Opponents have held rallies against the plant and CPV, saying the company is ignoring environmental quality-of-life issues associated with the plant, and expressing concern about the plant's proximity to the Waterbury-Oxford Airport.
"This will lead to diminished property values," said Chet Cornacchia, one of the organizers of the movement against the power plant.
Cornacchia and others have cited a California study concluding that the homes in the immediate vicinity of a power plant decrease in value between 5 and 7 percent.
But Carstensen said several factors can affect home values.
“It doesn’t say that there isn’t an impact, but this is a very complicated case because you have an airport that’s been there since '69, you have eight industrial parks, and then you have this power facility," he said.
If completed, the plant will provide electricity to about 750,000 people in the region.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority will hear arguments for and against the plant later this week.