Blueprint for a Power Plant

The price a private company has to pay to build a power plant in an urban area nowadays is pretty steep. The local utility has a monopoly on power that's not easy to break. Federal and state environmental laws prohibit construction of all but the cleanest, and therefore the most expensive, projects. And nobody--especially organized residents--wants a noisy power plant as a neighbor. Just to deal with that kind of opposition the company needs big money and a lot of political influence. And Harvard has got just enough of both to drop a $56-million power plant on a city block near the Med School in Boston's Mission Hill.

Before Harvard could undertake such a massive project, the University had to be sure that it had a plant that was worth the fight. And even though many of the medical-related institutions had to be convinced beforehand that they were going to get a better deal by building their own oil-burning plant than they could get by sticking with the local utility, Boston Edison.

What sold Harvard and the other institutions on the notion of their own power plant was the concept of "total energy"--a new way to provide cheap and reliable power by producing electricity as a by-product of steam generation, Harvard officials claim. So 11 medical-related institutions in the area, collectively known as the Medical Area Service Corporation (MASCO) threw their chips in with "total energy" and decided to build their own plant in Mission HIll.

But arguments about cheap kilowattage and reliable service aren't very attractive to the people who must live with the power plant in their backyard. There was a time when the Francis St. area residents who live closest to the site could have stopped this power plant--or any medical expansion for that matter--right in its tracks. That was back in 1969 when the University sent eviction notices to 180 tenant families in the Francis St. section of Mission Hill so it could clear the area for land-banking purposes. The tenants, with strong support from striking students at Harvard, formed the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard (RTH), and soon after forced the University to back down. The homes, some of them now rehabilitated at University expense, still stand as a testimonial to Harvard's capitulation.

In fact, the University even surrendered the lease on a valuable parcel of land nearby for the construction of a mixed-income housing project. This project would allow RTH residents to move from their homes to cheaper, modern housing. The housing project would thus clear the way for the hospital expansion Harvard wanted.

RTH had no experience with building any housing project, let alone one as ambitious as this one. It was only through Harvard's expertise that the residents managed to secure a $40-million mortgage from the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, the largest home loan that the MHFA has ever offered. But because the project was profit-making (274 of 774 units were to be rented at the market rate), MHFA could go only 90 per cent of the project's cost. So the University bailed out the housing project by contacting banking connections unavailable to RTH, and put its credit on the line to secure an equity loan from Citicorp, a subsidiary of First National City Bank.

But it didn't come for free. When student support at Harvard for RTH dissipated and the tenant organization itself grew flabby and lost some of its fight as well as some of its more radical members, Harvard began to exact some concessions. In exchange for some of its earlier aid to the RTH dream homes, the University asked for one simple favor--RTH was not to come out against the total-energy power plant. In February of 1975, the residents agreed to the deal.

The medical institutions meanwhile went ahead with plans to secure Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) approval for the MASCO power plant. MASCO needed this approval so it could take advantage of a state law that aids developers of "blighted" land in urban renewal area. This law allows the developer tax-exempt construction if it can prove to the BRA board that the land is blighted and will be benefitted by renewal. In return, the applicant has to pay some taxes to the city--a percentage of the project's income.

But the understanding with RTH was only a paper agreement, not good enough to stand up to possible attacks by other Mission Hill residents, those living on the other side of Huntington Ave. The BRA might be sensitive to such protests when considering whether to give MASCO the go-ahead. The residents across the street would not benefit from the housing, but would share the pollution. What if these residents were to rally support in the community against the plant--visible, angry antagonisms that could burst out at the BRA's hearing on the project's building permit and jeopardize the plant's neutral status in city hall, turning the political process against it?

Harvard didn't need to wait for an answer. The insurance policy it needed against going into a multi-million project and later having it shot down by residents came from the very group that had beaten the University in '69--the Roxbury Tenants of Harvard.

RTH staffers knew that inflation and an unsound bond market threatened to put the housing out of the financial grasp of the tenants. Harvard volunteered a plan where an estimated $300,000 in costs per year could be shaved off the project, just enough to put RTH over the top. It was a simple suggestion--but one that was difficult for RTH to refuse. Harvard offered to supply the housing project with free steam, chilled water, and cooling from its own power plant, thus inextricably linking the two. RTH accepted early this year. With that fait accompli, RTH had no choice but to work side by side with Harvard against other Mission Hill residents to get the power plant built as fast and as soon as possible.

So it was no surprise that the RTH members, out in full force to protect their interests, voted in favor of the plant with an informal show of hands at the final hearing on the power plant. There was little choice--a vote against the power plant amounted to a vote against the Roxbury Tenants' hard-fought housing project.

Mike Lerner is a man in a difficult position--he's working for the tenants, as a full-time staff member of RTH, but he's being paid by the landlord--Harvard, at least until money comes from the state for the housing project. It's Lerner's job to promote the housing, and, necessarily, the power plant. Lerner's not thrilled about the position he's in, and he'd like his project to be more selfsupporting. But to him Harvard is giving the residents about as good a deal as they can expect.

"Look," Lerner explains about RTH's decision to accept Harvard's offer, "if I wanted to have someone drive my car to New York City, and a guy says he is going down to New York and he would be willing to take my car but only by flat-bed trailer, I'll take it, because otherwise my car doesn't get to New York, at all." Lerner says, "Harvard doesn't give away ice in the winter," but the University has taken certain risks that it didn't have to take simply to make sure that the housing project gets off the ground.

Kevin Fitzgerald has only been a state representative for Mission Hill for a few months, but he likes to think he knows what most residents in Mission Hill want. He's also smart enough to realize that RTH can mobilize a couple of hundred voters within the organization against him at the next election.

Fitzgerald says now he was confused about his position all summer, before he decided to go public in favor of the power plant at the last hearing. "I listened to everybody and then I sat back and asked myself, 'Self, do I want this power plant?' And I said yes, because the power plant is linked to the housing, and the people want that housing." Fitzgerald has no love affair with Harvard, and he confides that some administrators at Harvard warned him that even if they didn't get local support, the University might go ahead and build its power plant anyway--and say to hell with the housing.

Fitzgerald sees Harvard as a potential benefactor to the community, and says he's willing to negotiate. He uses words like "trust" and "co-operative spirit" to describe what he hopes will be a new relationship between Mission Hill and Harvard. He sees the power plant as a stabilizing factor, providing construction jobs to unemployed Mission Hill workers through guaranteed local hiring practice clauses in construction contracts.

But John Grady and John Murphy don't buy what Lerner, Fitzgerald or Harvard is saying. Grady lives on the other side of Huntington Ave., the non-RTH side. He represents the Residents United to Stop Harvard, the most vocal opposition to the power plant's construction and to Harvard expansion in Mission Hill. Murphy wants to stop the plant too, but for a different reason. He's Edison's man on the project, an employee assigned almost fulltime to figure out ways to beat the power plant.

Together these two men represent the only remaining threat that the plant will not be built. They have already delayed the plant's construction by a couple of months.

Grady works by organizing. In a show of strength in June, Grady took the podium away from the BRA during a hearing on the environmental impact of the power plant, and never gave it up, to the joy of about 150 antipower plant Mission Hill residents in attendance. Grady's feelings on the power plant are simple. He sees the battle lines drawn not against a pro-power plant faction but against those who want to turn his predominantly working-class neighborhood into an upper class research center. As he said at one hearing this summer:

It is true that the area may end up looking very nice, but it won't be a neighborhood where ordinary working folk can afford to live. What's more the area won't even be a neighborhood anymore. It will become a kind of shrine to a lifestyle for those who think that a world where "the Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots only to God" is a good one. I mean, whoever heard of the Beacon Hill Little League or the Louisburg Square Women's bowling night.

Despite a strong showing by residents for the power plant at the August hearing, a "vast majority" of the people on the Hill are against the plant, Grady maintains. Still, he knows that even a stack of 350 petitions by Mission Hill residents strongly against the construction can't match an in-person turnout of RTH at a hearing.

Grady says he has only occasionally run into opposition to his own position on the hill. He tells the story of the time he knocked on an elderly woman's door while gathering names for the petition, "She opened the door and said, 'Aren't you John Grady, that communist who is working against the power plant?"' But Grady sat down with the woman, he says, and told her how Harvard has caused "premeditated blight" by buying homes where it intends to put up the power plant, allowing them to run down, then proceeding to ask for redevelopment power under the law; and how the promised construction jobs will only last for a few years. She thanked him, Grady says, and signed her name.

Murphy's game is different. He knows that Edison could stand to lose the same millions that MASCO hopes to gain if the institutions are allowed to drop their accounts and build their own power plant. And Edison, having tax problems itself with the city, is infuriated by the tax package that the non-profit institutions are negotiating in which MASCO would make in-lieu-of-tax payments of about $1.5 million annually to Boston. Edison claims it would have to pay at least three times that to the city just to deliver the same power.

"It is inconceivable that in 1975 in New England, anyone would seriously propose that an electric-generating and steam power plant should be constructed on Brookline Ave. in the middle of some of the finest hospitals in the world," Murphy has contended at hearings throughout the summer. Instead, Murphy offers his own joint proposal with MASCO wherein the institutions would build their own steam plant and Edison would continue to supply power through a transformer station that could be constructed a few blocks away.

Although Murphy and Grady are both in favor of the housing projects, neither buys the contention that the homes are contingent on the plant's construction. Grady calls the linkup blackmail, while Murphy contends that because Edison is supplying electricity to the housing, only a small steam unit is needed for the housing.

With the last hearing over and the BRA currently deliberating on the question of the building permit, it's difficult to predict exactly what will happen in Mission Hill. But there are some definite possibilities.

In a few weeks, after some more perfunctory investigation, the BRA will probably rule in favor of the power plant and grant the zoning variances that are needed for the plant's immediate construction. It will probably do so in part because it wants the housing project, but mostly because those in opposition to the power plant don't carry much political clout in City Hall.

At that point Grady and the anti-power plant faction may literally strap themselves to the pillars of the vacant homes that remain on the power plant site, creating a highly visual presentation of Harvard bulldozing a community. The outcome may yield some political compromise, but it is more likely that by that time Harvard will have gone too far to be intimidated by bad public relations, on the eve of construction.

The more potent Edison will try to stop demolition--but with court cases, not imagery. Murphy says that Edison is willing to take Harvard to the Supreme Judicial Court to gain an injunction if the University tries to demolish any of the buildings on the site. Murphy cites a few loose-ends in Harvard's case: "Nobody has ever proven that the area in question is really blighted and the original urban renewal plan says that area is meant for rehabilitation and not the installation of a large industrial facility." He says Edison is optimistic about winning the challenge in court--"believe me, we wouldn't go ahead with this if we didn't think we could."

But Donald C. Moulton, assistant vice president for community affairs and Harvard coordinator for all of the Mission Hill work, says frankly, "I don't think they have a case." He predicts a speedy and unobstructed power plant ground-breaking for the fall. Moulton suggests that Harvard isn't worried about any of the aspects of the power plant or housing project plans right now--except for the tight bond market that could hold up the project's construction. Charles U. Daly, vice president for government and community affairs, says of the housing bonds, "The welfare of the project is tied to what Abe Beame and Governor Carey do in New York City." But Moulton even seems confident about that. Because of the "unusual financial possibilities" of the housing, he says, he is "optimistic that we can work this out."

More than any man involved in the struggle against the construction, Murphy knows how high a price private institutions must pay to build a power plant. That price rightly ought to be prohibitive, Murphy says, because doctors and power don't mix. He has faith that someone will recognize the dangers of putting a large plant smack in the middle of a medical area, but he's not sure if that recognition will come too late.

"The cards have been stacked against us from the beginning," Murphy says. "There was no mention of our alternatives in the original impact statement--we were never really given a shot. People entertained us, the BRA listened to us, and we gave them information, but they never really did anything with it." What astonishes Murphy and the other people fighting the power plant, is that every city authority has turned its back on their objections, not the overwhelming power that Harvard has brought to bear on Mission Hill