By Josh Resnek
A month or two back, Constellation, the giant power company that owned the Mystic Generating Station on Everett’s Mystic River shoreline, sold the property for $25 million to Wynn Development, the owner of the Boston Harbor Casino and Hotel.
In a short while, energy being generated at the Mystic Generating Station will cease completely.
The old brick facilities and their towering chimneys will be torn down.
The land with be mitigated of pollution.
Entertainment development will replace the tried and true generating station.
Now comes word in Monday’s Boston Globe that the LNG terminal next door is the most likely energy producing candidate set for the potential chopping block.
That’s what the Globe’s John Chesto, a Globe business reporter who has written a great deal about Everett’s business community, had to say in a long piece detailing the possibilities for energy production in Everett in the near future.
According to the Globe piece, the prospects of continued energy production at the sprawling LNG terminal are growing less and less likely as two events converge.
Getting to the fossil fuels is one event.
Creating alternative energy sources to make up for the difference is another.
On May 31, 2024, as the Leader Herald reported several times during the past year, Mystic Generating Station puts out its lights and shutters its electric generators.
An important feature of the shutdown that is coming is the short term disaster it causes for Everett’s city treasury.
The shutdown and subsequent sale of the generating plant will cause the value of the land taxation to tumble, and with it, payments into city’s treasury.
The city has already acknowledged this is going to occur and will have a dramatic effect.
The shutting down and future sale of the LNG energy plant is a stunning possible development that for all the same reasons will cause an earthquake of sorts not just in the energy producing community in New England, but in the city itself as the value of the land for taxation purposes will plummet.
Many of us are old enough to recall the opening of the LNG plant and the arrival of the first mammoth LNG ocean going carrier into Boston Harbor and then docking in Everett.
That was 52 years ago.
According to the Boston Globe, there’s a Federal Regulatory Commission that expects to discuss the entire issue of energy in Everett when it meets in Portland, Maine on June 20.
The bottom line appears to be that the LNG plant and the Mystic Power Station are not needed to ensure the steady supply of electricity during peak times that occur during heat waves and cold waves.
These closures are all about the changing times and the arrival of green power in New England.
It would appear that Everett’s relationship with the fossil fuel world of electricity production is coming to an imperfect end.