OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Canada geese hang out in a field Wednesday morning as the shuttered NRG plant looms in the background.

The most immediate result of a 2021 study on reuse of the NRG plant in Dunkirk is … another study.

An online presentation last week sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Chautauqua County featured Rebecca Wurster, projects coordinator and planning manager for the county Planning and Development Department, discussing NRG.

Wurster, who used to be Dunkirk’s planning and development director, explained the June 2021 study was just a Phase 1, intended to be a big-picture look at reuse alternatives. The next phase “is really getting a deeper dive into the actual site,” she said.

Wurster noted the site contains two parcels: the NRG plant area, and a small National Grid electrical switchyard surrounded by that.

“They’ve recently made some major improvements to that switchyard,” she said of National Grid. “That’s really important to note because that switchyard isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So any redevelopment thoughts of the site have to take into account that switchyard.”

The next steps in getting the site reused include detailed facility and site infrastructure assessments, and investigation of electrical interconnection costs. Wurster said a Phase 2 study to do that was recently awarded $160,000 from the state.

The Phase 2 study will also include other pre-development activities not explored in the previous study, such as legal consultation, financial market analysis and development of marketing materials, she added.

The study is expected to start in April.

Wurster also offered a review of the June 2021 study, which was identified a data center or a mixed-use industrial park as two of the best alternatives for reuse of the site. The study was publicized soon after its release and the OBSERVER has covered it.

She said that environmental contamination makes it tough to do housing or mixed-use commercial development at the site. Working on the site to get a “clean slate,” ready for any sort of development, would cost up to $38 million.

“That’s just an approximate number,” she added. “There could be more uncovered when you go to remediate the site.”

Repowering the site with natural gas is not feasible, according to the 2021 study, for one notable reason: Political realities in the state government. It’s currently dominated by Democrats, and as Wurster noted Tuesday, they are pushing for renewable energy.

A commenter at the Zoom meeting asserted that a data center will cause an enormous overheating of nearby Lake Erie, killing fish. Wurster promised that issue would be explored in a Phase 2 study. Another person exhorted planners to take into account that Dunkirk gets its drinking water from the lake.

Toward the end of the presentation, Dunkirk Mayor Wilfred Rosas offered some of his most extensive comments about the NRG plant situation.

“We have to remember that this is private property owned by NRG, which is a multi-billion dollar corporation,” he said. “If we don’t play nice with them, they can play hardball, and in the end, we won’t get what we want.

“At this point, what we’re trying to do is keep them at the table. We’re just going to play nice with them to make sure that if the opportunity comes … to redevelop in there, that they are willing to allow that redevelopment to happen.”

He added that NRG can sit on the property and if it doesn’t violate any laws, “There’s nothing we can do.” Rosas said that if NRG sells the site, the company could be liable for an environmental cleanup, “so that’s why we have to make it lucrative toward them to be able to get out of the way.”