Covanta Warren

One of the more interesting experiments in power generating technology has been the implementation of garbage fired power stations. Rather than using a high efficiency fuel source like coal or natural gas, these plants run on municipal waste instead. The premise is the same; the trash is burned and the resulting heat is applied to water in the boilers. This creates steam, which is used to spin a turbine generator. One of the largest providers of Waste to Energy power in the country, Covanta, built one such plant in Oxford in the late 1980's. 

Covanta Warren opened in July 1988. At the time there wasn't much any development around the property. The adjascent landfill was still being cleared, it didn't open for another two years. 

At its peak the facility was handling 550 tons of waste a day. That translated to between 13 and 14 megawatts of power production. That may not sound like very much compared to the output of the average coal plant, but it was still enough to power over 10,000 homes.  

The econonics of Waste-to-Energy facilities are complex, and are largely affected by federal regulations. These pressures eventually began to outweigh the fiscal benefits of keeping the plant open, so Covanta announced in 2019 they were closing the facility. 

The complex only sat idle for a few years. I visited once during that time, regrettably without my camera. It was not the most impressive plant, and Oxford is a fairly inconvenient place to get out to from where I live.

 I found out from my brother one day in March of 2024 that it was in the process of being demolished. I can't say I'm too sad to see it go. I think the area will look a lot better without the obtrusive industrial facility sticking out from the trees. It goes on to join a long list of retired and eventually demolished power plants in the state. 

Howard M. Down Generating Station

 

Source: TFPNJ Postcard Archive

Vineland is one of those New Jersey cities that most folks in my native Essex County seem to know very little about. Whenever I'd bring it up, people would shrug their shoulders and say "I really don't know, it's just a weird little place in the pines". The city actually has a fascinating history though. It was founded by a man named Charles Landis who intended it to be a "temperance town". That meant no alcohol was to be sold or consumed within the district. It was this prohibition that led Dr. Thomas Welch to develop his famous fruit juice from the city's namesake grapes. The term "moron" was coined by a doctor working at the Vineland Developmental Center, which still remains a major employer within the city. In addition, Vineland holds the only municipal coal generating station ever constructed in New Jersey. Or, at least it used to. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

The original generating station on the property dated back to 1900. For context, this was only a couple decades after we started burning coal for electricity in the United States. Despite being somewhat revolutionary it was a small facility with equipment that was extremely inefficient by today's standards. The two belt driven stationary engines only generated a combined 270kw.  It wasn't long before the plant needed to be upgraded. A new boiler and a 750kw  generator were installed in 1917. Another 1000kw generator was added just a few years later in the early 1920s. Around this same time the Atlantic City Electric Co began to see the borough's electrical generating capacity as a threat to their business. After failing to muscle the utility out of providing service beyond their border, they offered $1.5 million for the existing plant. The borough was poised to follow through, which sparked outrage among the citizens. They voted down the sale, opting to keep the plant under local control. After the strong show of support the utility felt the need to upgrade the plant again. In 1929 a 3,000kw turbine was installed, the plant's most efficient generator yet. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

The plant was completely reconstructed in 1936 with funding from the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. The original 1900s building was unfortunately demolished to accomidate the construction. This rebuild added another 4,000kw to the plants capacity. However, with more generating capacity came more boiling hot waste water that needed to be dealt with. This is one of the reasons generating stations are usually built alongside bodies of water that can be discharged into. Since no such waterway existed in Vineland, a small cooling pool was constructed across the railroad tracks from the main plant. The water was pumped over to the pond where it was dispersed into the air to cool. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

A boiler capable of producing 72,000 pounds of steam per hour was constructed in 1939. Three years later a second 4000kw generator came online. It took five more years for the plant to see another expansion. The addition brought a new 105,000lb/hr boiler, followed by a 5000kw generator another few years after that. The new boiler could burn either coal or oil, so an oil tank was added on the other side of the train tracks. Several homes between Pear and Peach streets were demolished to make room for the tank. The new unit was also the first to utilize a crossflow cooling tower, which was installed next to the cooling pool. The demand for power in the region continued to increase throughout the 1950s. A man named Howard Down, who was the General Manager of the plant at the time, recognized the utility could benefit from hiring a consulting firm to plan out future construction. Each sucessive expansion was done thoughfully and efficiently thanks to this decision. Another project began in 1952, the largest to date since the remodel two decades prior. A 7,500kw generator was hooked up to the newest boiler which was capable of pushing another hundred thousand pounds of steam per hour through the turbines. A bunch of new switch gear, pumps, and a forced down draft fan were also added to the turbine hall. A 1955 expansion saw the addition of yet another generator. This one was powered by a 130,000lb/hr boiler system and was capable of generating 10,000kw. A new, completely modern control room was constructed above the hall, connecting all the complex machinery together. In 1960 a new unit was added to the eastern flank of the building, capable of generating 16,500kw. Another set of crossflow towers were constructed along W. Pear. With the new unit up and running the facility was able to generate 50,000kw. The plant was now one of the largest municipal generating stations on the east coast. And construction wasn't even complete yet. 

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

Each time a new unit was constructed it was attached to the eastmost section of the plant. That meant by the time the Unit 10 was added to the plant in the late 1960s they were completely out of space. The company continued to have to purchase and demolish neighboring homes to accomidate their expansion. The cooling equipment for the 1960's unit was constructed on land along Plum Street. Down was now capable of producing just shy of 82,000mw.

Source: TFPNJ Historic Document Archive

As time pressed on, greater emphasis was placed on finding cleaner sources of energy than coal and kerosene. The relatively small output of the Down plant and its reliance on coal put it right in the crosshairs. The city couldn't justify retrofitting their old boilers or adding the expensive scrubber equipment that would allow them to continue to burn the fuel the plant was designed for. By 2010 the coal units were decommissioned, leaving only the more modern oil units online.

The following year a 64mw natural gas fired simple cycle generator was installed where the old cooling pool used to be in 2011. The new unit was dubbed Howard Down 11. The crossflow towers for the 1950s units were removed as well to clear up some space. 

Unit 11 was way more efficient and inexpensive to maintain than the old hulking powerhouse across the tracks. In addition, the company built another simple cycle unit in Clayville, bringing another 64mw of power to the grid. Unit 10 inside the old plant was kept around to be switched on during times of peak demand, but those times became more rare as the regional grid stabilized. By 2021 the utility had purchased an adjascent building and began moving all of the offices and workshops over. It was announced the following year that the rest of the old equipment would be decommissioned and the plant would be demolished.

I pulled up outside Howard Down on a warm August morning shortly after the demolition plans were announced. The iconic "Vineland Municipal Electric Plant" sign was dark, but the building was still lit up and humming. I had been keeping an eye on the plant for almost a decade, waiting for it to finally close. I first saw the beautiful brick behemoth while in town to document the former Newcomb Hospital. By then the building was hardly ever being used to generate power, but I remember watching workers going in and out of the front doors when I drove around it in the years after. Ten years after the first time I ever saw it and she still looked exactly the same. 

I was hoping there would be some clue that the workers weren't going inside the building anymore since the demolition was already announced. That wasn't the case. I carefully made my way around the building, eventually making my way to the railroad tracks that bisected the old plant from its modern replacement. It wasn't too long before I was climbing up a ladder that would eventually bring me inside. 

Quietly, I worked my way through the maze of boilers from different eras. I wasn't sure what I was going to find when I got to the generator hall. So often when these stations get updated the old generators are ripped out or torn apart for pieces and scrap. Thankfully that wasn't the case here.

Walking down the hall was like walking through history. Generators of different sizes and from progressively different eras lined the room from one end to the next, eight in total.

I did the best I could to document everything, but I only had my phone on me. I intended to return and shoot everything on my real camera, but time got away from me. While doing research for this post I opened up the street view and was horrified to see that demolition was already in full swing. I was sure by the time abatement started all the local power plant goons would be posting the place all over social media. I never saw another photo though. Hopefully someone did a better job documenting the building as it was such an amazing and rare relic of power generation. 

Only time will tell what will replace the old generating station now that the building is gone. I'm hoping a memorial display is installed somewhere for folks to see. The old neon sign that once graced the roof is set to be restored and reinstalled next to Howard Down 11. At least that will serve as a small reminder of the plant that powered the town for over a century. 

B.L. England Generating Station

Every summer my family would join thousands of others on the long trek from the suburbs of North Jersey to Wildwood. The journey always seemed to take forever, but I knew when we hit the Great Egg Harbor Bridge our drive was almost over. It wasn't really the bridge that I remember using as a landmark though; it was the old B. L. England Generating Station on the shores of Beesley's Point that truly served as a welcome sign.

Power generation began at the 350 acre site in 1961, when Atlantic City Energy Co. put four small diesel generators into service. Demand for electricity in the area was growing though, so construction began swiftly on a brand new coal powered unit which was brought online just a year later. The new coal burning unit was far more powerful than the old diesel generators, with a maximum output of 129 megawatts. By 1964 a second coal unit was completed, giving the station a 285MW potential.

Though the England station was among a dozen others in the state burning coal, it did so slightly differently. Most generating stations that came before B.L. England used pulverized coal in their boilers. The England station utilized "Cyclone Boilers", a Babcock & Wilcox invention in which larger chunks of solid fuel are dispersed in a circular fashion. This allowed the fuel to burn up just as efficiently, but with less preperation. It also allowed the England station to burn a small percentage of alternative fuel with coal, in this case scrap tires. One of the downsides of using these larger unrefined chunks of fuel was the amount of waste leftover. As much as 70,000 tons of slag material had to be carted off site every year. It was so cumbersome the plant had to be shut down bi-annually in order to clean out all the waste. 

A decade later the facility was expanded once again. Another 165 megawatt oil burning unit brought the total potential of the plant up to 450mw. Unfortunately with each expansion came new problems. The generating process creates recondensed waste water, which is often scalding hot. The waste water was being discharged into the harbor without being cooled, causing a variety of ecological issues. To help remedy this, a massive concrete cooling tower was added to the site. The near-boiling waste water was pumped into the tower and air cooled before finally ending up in the harbor. 

By 1987 the three original chimneys were chopped down and a new modern one was added. The new stack included scrubber equipment which allowed sulfur dioxide to be removed from the exhaust gas. Since the new chimney was going to stand out so much, the company decided to try and mimic the design of a lighthouse. I've never seen anything quite like it at the dozens of other generating stations I have visited. Unfortuneately the scrubbers weren't doing enough to keep the plant off the radar of the EPA. In 2006 the plant was cited for violating the clean air act. This meant they either needed to install expensive pollution mitigation systems, or close. Atlantic City Energy decided instead to sell the plant to the BL Holdings company for just over 12 million dollars.

By 2013 Unit 1 was brought offline, and BL Holdings planned to convert the other two units to natural gas. They asked the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for permission to build a new pipeline to accomidate the conversion, much to the chagrin of locals. The group initially approved the plan, which would have seen a pipeline going through the Pinelands. However, public utilities are banned from the Pinelands, which is a federally protected national reserve. After some back and forth the pipeline was initially approved by the Pinelands Commision. The locals weren't having it though. The Pinelands Preservation Alliance appealed the ruling, and shortly afterwards the New Jersey Sierra Club and Environment New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the Pinelands Commision. The appellate court ruled against the commission, and found that their president didnt have the authority to approve the pipeline. The Commision voted again a year later, this time in favor with a 9 - 5 split. The NJ Sierra Club and Environment NJ were quick to appeal the ruling. The plant was already scheduled to be shut down for the conversion, but instead it continued to burn coal until 2019. By then the owners of the plant had enough of the legal trouble. Non renewable power generation had become extremely unpopular in New Jersey, and pipelines themselves had become a national hot button issue. On May 1st 2019 the plant officially went offline. 

It was a calm morning as we arrived in the quiet town of Beesley's Point to document the power plant. The warm air was filled with the nostaglic and unmistakable smell of the Jersey Shore. We walked along the old rail spur which once brought coal to the facility, now overgrown and rusted. 

It wasn't long before we were at the base of the massive structure, searching for a staircase. We spent about an hour exploring the building as folks began to wake up. Boats filled the harbor and fisherman were casting reels, it was time for us to leave before someone noticed us and called the police. As we departed it was clear to us there was never going to be another use for this old outdated generating station. Unspurisingly, demolition was announced shortly after our visit. The first major step towards demolition was remediating all the hazardous materials from the plant. In 2022 the first real visible act of demolition took place when the iconic cooling tower was imploded. Over the course of the next year the generating equipment and valuable materials were removed, and on April 21st 2023 the boilers were imploded. It was both impressive and disgusting watching the old steel structure disappear into a cloud of smoke and coal dust. In some ways it was a fitting end for a monument to the most dirty and destructive form of power generation on this planet. 

At the time of publishing, only the iconic chimney and a few ancillary structures remain on the site. I'm looking forward to seeing what the future holds for the property. I still haven't been over the Great Egg Harbor Bridge since the demolition, but I'm sure the next time I do it will be strange not seeing B.L. England for the first time in my life. 

Mercer Generating Station

Most coal fired generating stations are retired because they're outdated in one way or another. Many more are shuttered each year as a result of protests from environmental groups. Neither is the case for Mercer Generating Station, which was constructed on Duck Island in 1960.

Gottscho, Samuel H. Mercer Generating Station. 1962. Photograph. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.

The new coal plant joined the Hudson Generating Station as the most modern workhorses in PSEG's New Jersey fleet. The new facility had an output of 632 megawatts, coming from two huge 3600/3600-rpm cross compound, six flow reheat steam turbine generators. Each unit consisted of two turbines. Steam would enter into a high pressure chamber first, then through medium and low pressure chambers before actuating the generator. The condensation in each chamber is collected and returned to the boilers. Steam that has cooled during the process goes into a reheater, after which it is forced into the high pressure section of the secondary turbine. The steam then leaves the high pressure chamber of the secondary unit, after which it is split between the medium pressure chambers of both units. The generating equipment was comically large, and overwhelmed anyone standing inside the turbine hall.

Despite being one of the most modern power plants in the state, the facility was upgraded with pollution controls a number of times, at tremendous expense to PSEG. The first of which were precipitators added to the plant in 1995. The purpose of this equipment was to reduce the amount of soot expelled from the plant. This was just the beginning.

Between 2004 and 2011 the company spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to reduce pollution at the facility. A selective catalytic reduction unit set them back $100 million. Three years later, ten million was spent to swap out equipment that utilized mercury with simple carbon. Finally, $500 million was spent in 2010 to build state of the art baggers and scrubbers which further reduced toxic emissions. They spent the same amount at Hudson, the sister station in Jersey City, bringing the total bill to one billion dollars for pollution control in 2010 alone.

So much money and manpower was spent on pollution control that very little attention was directed to the generating equipment. Coal power plants were shutting down all across the nation as the cost of natural gas stayed low. Several coal powered facilities were being converted to burn natural gas but Mercer and Hudson wouldn't be so lucky. PSEG announced that both stations would be shuttered in 2017.

Mercer had already been on standby for nearly a year and a half before the closure. As a result the property was very quiet as we walked the fence line during our visit to the plant. Very few people had visited the facility since it closed, so we were on edge as we dashed across the still lot to the behemoth structure. We spent hours inside, taking photos and admiring the fascinating machinery few ever get so close to. After another year or so the plant became a favorite destination for the urban tourists of Instagram, and by 2019 the property was sold to Hillco Redeveloplent. They also purchased Hudson. Demolition work ramped up after the smokestacks were demolished in February of 2020. Only time will tell how long it will take for the Mercer Generating Station to fade from the collective memory of the state.

Essex Generating Station

The Esssex Generating Station opened in 1915. Built for the city based Public Service company, the structure popped up along conrail's Passaic and Harsimus line. No architect is specifically credited for the building, but the gorgeous structure is almost certainly a work of the legendary Paul Phillipe Cret, who worked on many PSEG projects throughout the years.

Four low pressure Babcock & Wilcox coal fed stoker boilers belched out steam to power two General Electric turbines when the building first came online. The following year four more low pressure boilers were added. Four additional low pressure boilers and third turbine were added in 1919, and in 1924 eight more boilers and three new turbines brought the total to 20 boilers and 6 turbine units. The completed station was the largest in the state, stealing the title away from the Merrion Generating Station in Jersey City which was also designed by Cret.

Up until now the power generated by the plant was supplied directly to the consumer. That changed in 1925 when additional switching equipment was added, and the station became a "key feeder point" into the existing high powered grid. The purpose of switching equipment is to take the high voltage power being generated and convert it to a more suitable output for household use. Having all of the companies generating stations tied into the same grid allowed the company to more accurately determine the necessary output required by each plant, while also allowing uninterrupted service in the event of an equipment failure.

By 1933 oil burners had been added to several boilers at the facility. They previously operated by burning coal exclusively. Three years later a huge fire decimated the switch house, requiring a major reconstruction. The process would take years to complete. Eight low pressure boilers were removed in 1937, and were replaced by two high pressure units. The new equipment was the first at the facility built with the ability to burn oil in addition to coal. An advanced new turbine was installed as well, which used exhaust steam to power one of the older units. Its one of the earliest examples of a combined cycle system I've across in my years of power plant research. By 1940 the electrical switching network overhaul was finished, bringing the plant totally back on line.

In 1946 four more low pressure boilers and the original "Unit No.1" were retired. The following year a new 1000,00 kW turbine took its place. In addition another high pressure boiler was installed, which could burn coal, oil, Or natural gas. Additional switching equipment was added at this time, and would continue to be upgraded over the next four decades. Three years after the prior equipment upgrade all the remaining coal boilers were converted to operate on oil. By 1955 eight of them were out of service. In the early 1960s generating technology was changing. Large, hulking boiler based structures were being phased out in favor of sleek standalone gas turbines which operate like a jet engine as opposed to a steam engine. 1963 saw the construction of several of these self contained peaker turbines on the property outside the building. Eight years later they built 3 more, and another in 1972. The last of the low pressure boilers were taken offline a few years later, limiting the plant building to the three high pressure boilers and the exterior units.

The 1970's brought a growing collective conscious towards environmental responsibility. In 1973 two separate EPA investigations were conducted with regards to the plant. The first was the result of roofers tossing empty buckets of roof tar into the river. The second was the result of a small self reported oil spill that was promptly addressed by the company. Unfortunately this was just the beginning. A letter from the Passaic Valley Sewer commission dated January 21st, 1976 goes into great detail about witnessing EGS employees committing blatant EPA violations on several occasions. Oily discharge was supposed to be collected in a tanker and brought to a facility in Irvington to be dealt with. However PSEG employees were seen pumping water contaminated with kerosene from manholes onto roadways and in one case directly into a tributary of the Passaic River. While that practice seemed to have ceased after the repeated complaints, Pseg continued to let thousands of gallons of kerosene seep into the river from a the same broken underground pipe. Oil sheens were being reported and investigated, but a source could not be located. The leak eventually got so bad that it left a noticable trail right back to the station.

All the steam turbines inside the building were retired by 1978, after the new compact turbines elsewhere in the yard rendered the old units useless. By 1990 another new peaker unit added to the property, this time replacing #8 which was had been retired for a decade by that point. The following year The US Coast Guard penned a letter to the plant management stating that there was a noticeable sheen of oil across the Passaic River near the plant. An inspection revealed that the piece of shoreline owned by PSEG was heavily contaminated and a leaking kerosene pipeline was the cause of the sheening. The state police marine unit took on the investigation, eventually issuing a summons to PSEG. Likely in an attempt to remedy the kerosene leak, the massive turbine hall behind the switchhouse was demolished, leaving a bare patch of land three times the size of the remaining building. The switch house continued to operate as it was heavily tied into the grid. It wouldnt be long before inspectors were back on the property asking to access the shoreline. In 1997 during the cleanup of the former Diamond Alkali site, a six mile section of the Passaic River was being studied by the EPA. It was revealed that the generating station property was a significant contributor to the pollution of the river. However, since light remediation efforts had already been taken, the agency declined to charge the company for fear it would interrupt the work being done.
The case was still being investigated in 2003 when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency contacted PSEG as a result of the findings. The letter listed all the other companies who contributed to the contamination and asks them all to become a "Cooperating Party" to the Lower Passaic River Project, which sought to help reverse the damage with the financial help of those responsible.

I first visited the plant several years ago. I was astonished at how well kept the switch building appeared to be. The structure wasn't abandoned abruptly like most of the places I visit. Instead the building simply fell out of practical use as advances in grid management rendered it obsolete. Several graffiti artists had snuck inside by this point, but they didn't mess with most of the interior. Unfortunately, a year or more after my first visit the place was run through by instagram tourists whose disruptive presence decimated the peaceful atmosphere. Thankfully I had already documented the best parts. The building continues to sit abandoned, however the property around it is very active to this day. Trespassing on power plant property is not taken lightly in this state, so I would recommend against attempting to visit the old switch house. If caught you will most certainly be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.