Judgment Day for Power Plant

IT WON'T COME as a surprise today if the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) gives Harvard permission to build its $56 million power plant near the Medical School in Boston. Harvard waded through years of negotiations, hearings, and applications simply to get to the point where the BRA would say yes to its plant.

What will be a surprise, however, is that the BRA is in effect saying no to Boston Edison, something akin to handing down a trust busting order to a monopoly.

Boston Edison may not be in the same league as Consolidated Edison of New York or Public Service of New Jersey when it comes to political power. But most companies in Boston have always accepted that the only way to get reliable electricity in the city was to buy from Boston Edison.

That's why to Harvard officials the implications of the power plant are so great. They see the plant as an impetus for other private companies to band together, as Harvard and the medical institutions in the area did, shuck the local power company, and opt for their own plant with more economical rates.

To some, the plant's approval even signifies a return to the days when every hotel or small company had its own total energy generator in the basement, before it became cheaper to tie-in with the local power company.

But Harvard isn't in in this project for the trust busting. Harvard administrators claim that the process of total energy power--the ability to produce chilled water and electricity as a by-product of steam, and to incinerate refuse, in the same plant--within the allowable pollution limits, makes not only private energy but this plant's model in particular, the energy wave of the future.

Edison has no particular affinity for total energy, especially when it means a possible multi-million dollar loss in profits. But Edison also knows that self-interest doesn't make a strong court case, so when the company files for an injunction to stop the plant, probably sometime in the near future, you won't see any mention of loss of profits in the brief.

Edison will resort to the only argument that it's difficult to believe that the courts may buy, that the city won't be receiving its fair share of taxes if the private hospitals are allowed to build their power plant. But a $1.5 million in-lieu of tax agreement pending between the city and the medical institutions will probably nullify Edison's claim.

If Edison is wrong and if private total energy is one way out of the energy crisis, then, as Harvard officials will tell you, nobody seems to lose, except for the evil power trust.

But the situation is not that simple, because buried under those glossy designs, impressive energy saving figures and powerful statistics on cheaper kilowatts, is damage that can't be objectified in environmental or trust-busting terms.

DESPITE ALL THE GOOD that Harvard has said the plant will offer to the Mission Hill residents who surround the plant's site, such as the two-year construction jobs, and a housing project that it claims could not be built without the plant, some residents believe that the power plant will sound the area's death knell.

These residents are not fighting the plant because of any knee-jerk reaction against Harvard. For residents who see hospitals creeping up in front and in back of their homes, as they have for the past decade, figures about cleaner power, or data on cheap rates are meaningless. More important, these residents know that the plant can service a lot more hospitals than are currently in the area. And, despite written pledges against expansion, these residents believe that their homes would have to go if more institutions were to come to the area. And it is these people, trapped in Mission Hill, who stand to lose the most from the BRA's decision to let Harvard build its power plant.