One solution is to raise money from some source, possibly the federal stimulus package.
Under the existing electric rate structure, over the course of a year, it is millions of dollars cheaper for the ships’ operators to have their vessels idle in port than to pay for shore-based power. There is one major obstacle, however the cost of electric power. And Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the Economic Development Corporation, said the agencies were working with Carnival Cruise Lines, which agreed to retrofit its ships to connect to shore power. The money needed for the improvements estimated at $3.5 million by Steven Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman is already included in the authority’s 20 budgets, officials said. That, they said, could make New York the first port on the East Coast to provide shore-based power for cruise ships. Representatives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the piers, and the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which leases Pier 12 for the cruise ship terminal, said that cold ironing is set to come to Brooklyn by 2011. No such technology exists at the Red Hook terminal, but to the relief of residents, that may soon change. The system allows the ships to use land-based power and turn off their engines. Most vexing, he added, is that a better alternative exists: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle are among the West Coast ports that employ a process called cold ironing, in which docked vessels plug into what amounts to a giant extension cord from the shore. “I thought, well, wow, these ships are right at the end of their street essentially blowing their smoke all day long,” he said. He said he had been writing letters protesting the fumes since around 2006, the year the terminal opened. Armstrong, a musician, is married to a nurse, and the couple have two young children. Environmental groups say that a single ship, docked for one day, emits as much exhaust as 10,000 cars, maybe more. Armstrong said the other day, is a noxious smoke that wafts over the surrounding area. When the ships are docked at Pier 12, the terminal at the foot of Pioneer Street, they are essentially idling, using their diesel engines to keep their electrical systems running.
Armstrong can see the smokestacks of the Queen Mary 2 and other cruise ships rising over the rooftops. But when Adam Armstrong of Pioneer Street thinks of exhaust, he thinks of the westward view from his backyard, toward the water. RESIDENTS of Red Hook, Brooklyn, who worry about car exhaust have long looked in consternation to the east, to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, or, more recently, to the south, where an Ikea store opened last year amid fears about the traffic it would draw.