Turbines cast cloud over Southeast SF

For more than four decades, the people of Southeast San Francisco have lived literally under a cloud, the result of the two large power plants in their neighborhood. The pollution from the plants has caused countless residents to suffer from a variety of respiratory and other ailments, especially asthma. Finally, though, it appears that some relief is on the way; everything appears set for one of these plants, the Hunters Point Power Plant, to be shut down early next year, and all concerned seem cautiously optimistic, despite previous disappointments, that this will in fact happen.

Of course, the air quality in the Southeast would be improved even more if the other facility, Mirant Corporation's Potrero Hill Plant, were closed as well. The city's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has a plan to do exactly that - but by the dubious means of building a new, "cleaner" power plant nearby.

The PUC's idea is that San Francisco needs electricity generated within the city, so that if the Mirant plant is shut down, some other source of generation must be found. It so happens that as part of a legal settlement associated with the energy crisis, the state received four natural-gas-fired combustion turbines, which it gave to the city. The city wants to put three of these turbines in the Potrero Hill neighborhood, near Islais Creek. The Independent System Operator (ISO), which regulates electricity reliability in California, has told the PUC that if these turbines are sited within the city, then it will stop paying Mirant to keep the Potrero Hill plant running under a so-called Reliability Must Run (RMR) contract.

Now by most accounts the turbines will burn cleaner and operate less often than the current decades-old Potrero plant, so that replacing the Mirant plant with the turbines would probably improve the air quality in the area, at least marginally. Unfortunately, Mirant has refused to guarantee that it will shut down its plant when the ISO pulls its RMR contract. In fact, the company recently completed a $30 million project to install pollution scrubbers on the plant, an upgrade that will allow it to continue operating more or less indefinitely, and it will no doubt do so if electricity prices remain high.

Environmental and neighborhood activists fear that the area will end up with both power plants.

Even if this nightmare scenario does not come to pass, the PUC's plan is questionable. While the turbines themselves are free, the city would have to float a $200 million bond to pay for buildings to house them. It has been almost three years since the city's voters passed the "Solar Bond" measures, Propositions B and H, and still not one bond has been issued. In the meantime, the city has allocated several million dollars from the Mayor's Energy Conservation Account to pay for solar and energy-efficiency projects, but much of this money remains unspent.

When the voters have made it clear that they want solar power and energy efficiency, when the PUC has not managed to spend the relatively small amount of money set aside for solar projects, should the city really be dedicating large portions of its staff time - and $200 million - to continue down the ruinous path of fossil-fuel dependence? See the accompanying article for better ways for San Francisco to advance its energy future.

WhatYouCanDo

Write to:
Richard Sklar, President
San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
1155 Market St., 11th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103.

Tell the PUC not to put new fossil-fuel generation in the city, but to devote focus on developing energy efficiency, solar, and other renewable-energy technologies that will allow the city to rid itself of fossil-fuel generation once and for all.

Doug Beach, San Francisco co-chair, Chapter Energy Committee