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**JULY 21, 2022**

Sean Patrick Maloney's Hazardous Support for Dirty Energy
Infrastructure

BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

The story of Maloney's office shutting down a colleague who tried to
stir up opposition to a fracked-gas plant is part of a pattern.

In early January 2021, the office of newly sworn-in freshman congressman
Mondaire Jones began circulating a letter to the New York delegation,
drumming up opposition to the proposed expansion of the Danskammer power
plant

in Newburgh. The fracked-gas facility was one of three liquefied natural
gas power plants up for consideration in the New York area, which were
meeting fierce opposition from activists. There was one in Astoria,
Queens, another in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and the Newburgh plant.

As a candidate, Jones ran in opposition to the Danskammer expansion.
Hurricane Sandy flooded the plant in 2012, taking it offline, and since
2014, it was revamped as a "peaker plant," sending power to the
electrical grid only during times of peak consumption. In 2019,
Danskammer Energy floated a $500 million expansion plan to make it a
full-time operation. The Newburgh plant was just across Jones's
district lines, technically in Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney's
district-but upstream of Jones's, causing immediate pollution
concerns, not to mention climate risks. There were troubles, too, about
environmental racism: Over half of Newburgh is Black and Latino, and the
population suffers from inordinately high rates of asthma. The LNG plant
was certain to worsen the air pollution if it were expanded.

Opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure has been a common principle for
New York Democrats; even Chuck Schumer led marches

last year against the fracked-gas plant in Astoria. But Jones's office
soon found that their opposition to the plant had made a formidable
enemy in Maloney.

"Almost immediately, we hear secondhand that Sean himself is making
calls to other members of the delegation warning them not to sign this
letter," said Zach Fisch, then Jones's chief of staff, in an
interview.

Shortly thereafter, Fisch said, he got a call from Maloney's office,
insisting that they drop their campaign. "I got a call from someone on
Maloney's staff, saying, effectively, 'bury this or else,'" said
Fisch. "We were still kind of inclined to find a way forward on it,
but soon they had so successfully threatened everyone else in the
delegation that it was just us, [Reps] AOC, and Bowman on the letter. It
looked worse to send then not to send-so it got buried." Just weeks
earlier, Maloney had won a campaign to become the chairman of Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee.

Maloney is now running in a district with many of Jones's voters.
He's in a contested primary against state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, who
is running as a supporter
of the Green New Deal.

Danskammer wasn't the first time Rep. Maloney had allied himself with
the fossil fuel industry. In November 2014, Maloney was one of only 31
House Democrats, and one of only three New York congressional Democrats,
to vote in favor of legislation allowing the construction of the
Keystone XL Pipeline. Three months later he was one of only 28
congressional Democrats, and the only Democratic member of the New York
delegation, to vote with 238 Republicans

in favor of the pipeline's construction. The pipeline was ultimately
nixed by President Biden. In 2018 he supported the Catskills Competitive
Power Ventures gas-fired power plant, which was also plagued by scandal

and aggressively opposed by activists.

Maloney's support of the Danskammer plant emerged

as an issue in a 2019 town hall he held for constituents, who pressed
him on how he could justify its expansion while also supporting a Green
New Deal. Activist opposition to the plant persisted through Maloney's
reelection campaign in 2020. In July of that month, environmentalists
marched

on his office in opposition. But he maintained his support of the
project. Maloney pointed to an extremely questionable proposal the
plant's backers had put forward claiming that eventually it would be
converted to green hydrogen, a plan that many pointed out

has not been tried successfully anywhere in the country.

According to Fisch, Jones's campaign against Danskammer was not well
received. A recent article recounting the strained dynamics between Rep.
Jones's and Rep. Maloney's offices in the River Newsroom, a local
Hudson Valley publication, alleged that a Maloney staffer made that much
very clear
:
""My boss is livid, this power plant's in our district, you're
putting us in a really tough position," a Maloney staffer allegedly
told Jones's team," the piece recounts.

"With certainty, that opposition came from Sean directly," said
Fisch.
Maloney's office, meanwhile, denies his involvement. "These claims
are patently false. Rep. Maloney's record as an uncompromising
defender of the planet and the Hudson Valley speaks for itself," said
spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg in a statement. "Rep. Maloney has always
prioritized environmental concerns and the involvement of local voices
when considering what is in the best interest of the Hudson Valley."

The statement notwithstanding, Maloney's support of the plant was for
naught. On October 27, 2021, the state Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) denied an air permit for Danskammer. The DEC found
that the plant's expansion did not comply with the requirements of the
state's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA),
specifically the greenhouse gas limit.

The incident is notable in part because Maloney has sought to portray
himself as an opponent of the fossil fuel industry. In a recent ad, he
touts his
passage of a 2019 bill that banned oil tankers from anchoring on the
Lower Hudson River. But that incident far predates the Danskammer Plant
fracas. During his time in congress, Maloney has accepted over $65,000
from fossil fuel companies and industry executives.

That Maloney ended up running in Jones's redrawn district, pushing him
into a race for the hotly contested open seat in New York's 10th, has
only added to the bad blood between the two congressmen. That move has
placed Maloney in a bluer district, one where his openness to the fossil
fuel industry might not be so well-received. As

**Times Herald-Record** columnist Ken Hall wrote

of Maloney in 2015, "You can't beat Maloney from the right because
he will always lean that way, sometimes for political reasons, more
often because that's his natural inclination." The question remains
if that will appeal to today's left-leaning voters in New York's
17th.

****

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