The New York Power Authority is holding Albany residents hostage while it decides whether to go green. Currently two old 3-megawatt diesel generators sit in Sheridan Hollow to provide emergency electricity for the Empire State Plaza. With smokestacks at ground level, they have been a threat to public health for years — and now the state has sadistically increased how much the old monsters are fired up for "testing."

NYPA agrees that the decrepit diesels must be replaced but, instead of doing that, the agency is blackmailing residents, saying nothing can change unless its scheme to power downtown Albany with fracked gas moves forward. That plan would add two massive 8-megawatt turbines in Sheridan Hollow that would run all the time, burning nearly 50 percent more gas in the community and perpetuating the disproportionate exposure of people of color to pollution.

It's time for NYPA to stop using thug tactics and commit to a plan that burns less, not more, fossil fuels in Sheridan Hollow. They need to replace the emergency generators, and this time, how about putting them somewhere else? Rest assured that they would not be "tested" for hours on end outside the second-floor window of the Capitol.

Mary T. Finneran

Cairo