Friday, March 21st 2008, 4:00 AM
A planned 28-acre park on the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront will move forward now that the state has rejected a long-standing proposal for a power plant on the same site.
Though TransGas Energy Systems officials plan to review their legal options, community advocates and leaders cheered the plan's demise for making the creation of Bushwick Inlet Park possible.
"Finally, we can move on and [build] a world-class park," said Evan Thies of the community group Neighbors Allied for Good Growth. "The state listened to the community and rid us of this awful proposal once and for all."
TransGas had proposed a 1,100-megawatt power plant in 2002, revising that plan twice. The proposals were rejected by the state's Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment, which determined the project was "not in the public interest."
"To build a power plant in an area that already has more than its fair share of pollution and industry and to do it in the place of open space would be a travesty and a betrayal," said Assemblyman Joe Lentol (D-Greenpoint).
But TransGas' lawyer John Dax said officials were surprised by Thursday's actions.
"The state has set lofty goals for greenhouse gas reduction and has real concerns for [creating] power plants within the city," Dax said.
"It would seem to be incompatible with those goals to be denying a permit to a state-of-the-art clean power plant."