[Sustain] Exciting Power Plant Report & Sign On Statement!

[Eric Brooks]

Besides the hearing alert I just sent you, there have been exciting and 
powerful developments in the fight to stop the City from letting 
multi-national energy corporation JPower build the polluting natural gas 
CT power plant in the Bayview Hunters Point.

Please check out this update and look at the attached STOPPP! Coalition
sign-on statement that we need you/your group to endorse so that we can 
show City Hall and the SF Utilities Commission (SFPUC) that there is a
massive, broad movement building to demand that this unacceptable plant
be stopped; and that the existing Mirant/Potrero power plant must begin 
shut down operations immediately.

Huge Public Turnout Last Friday Oct 19th!

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) staff's attempt to 
quickly run the JPower plant through a surprise SFPUC meeting for 
approval failed miserably. By the time of the meeting, the four 
cornerstone groups forming the campaign to halt the plant (Our City, 
Greenaction, Sierra Club, and the San Francisco Green Party) were in 
place and ready to organize. These four groups and many of you, 
organized beautifully to get a huge turnout of Bayview residents and 
environmental activists to the meeting. At the same time, the strange 
bedfellows PG&E influenced APRI anti-plant effort also continued its own 
organizing, and the result of all this was that we packed the hearing 
room -and- the halls -and- an overflow room with San Francisco residents 
demanding an end to the power plant project. There were scores of 
comments opposing the plant and only two speakers in favor.

Commissioners Richard Sklar, David Hochschild, And Dennis Normandy Put
The Staff On The Defensive And Attacked The Plant Proposal!

These three Commissioners, at least for now, are strongly supporting our
side. Commissioner Sklar took point on repeatedly attacking the project
as unnecessary and wasteful, and chided the staff for using misleading
exaggerations to push the plant proposal. He and Commissioner Hochschild
brought forward key information which cast the power plant deal in a
very bad light. Some of these key points are:

- The truly dirty part of the existing Mirant plant are three old diesel
turbines which rarely run and only account for 3% of the energy it
produces. (Current plans for renewable energy and efficiency in San
Francisco will easily produce enough energy to make those old diesels
unnecessary.) The big natural gas generator on that plant does not run
any dirtier than the proposed Combustion Turbine(CT) plant.

- New air regulations will mandate, by law, that those existing dirty
diesel generators must be shut down anyway by the end of 2009. So if we
take no action, build nothing, the worst power plant pollution source in
the Potrero basin will be shut down all by itself. The JPower plant is
therefore, utterly unnecessary.

- JPower will be allowed to run the proposed CT plant half a day, every
day, perpetually, for profit. This means that the proposed plant is
-not- a 'peaker' plant; it is a cash cow for the fossil fuel industry;
and the SFPUC has no power to reduce its hours of operation.

- Mirant corporation has repeatedly refused to promise that it will shut
down the existing plant if the JPower plant is built.

- The California Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) was forced to
admit that it is not solely at its discretion to remove the requirement
for the existing plant to run. Even if Cal ISO says the plant can close,
Schwarzenegger's California Public Utilities Commission and Bush's
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can say 'NO'.

These damning revelations and more, created a strong air of skepticism
in four of the five SFPUC commissioners, and when the Commissioners met
later in closed session to consider approving the JPower deal, they took
-no- action. This was a big victory and slowed down the progress of the
JPower plant considerably, giving us a chance to stop it if we keep
pushing hard against it and keep turning up the heat on the 
Commissioners and Board of Supervisors

However, the fight is far from over. SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal
let slip at the end of last Tuesday's regular SFPUC meeting that she has
been working with the Mayor's office to create a -new- deal for
installing the Combustion Turbine plant, and the President of the SFPUC
(Ryan Brooks) left the door open for -another- surprise meeting soon to
consider that new deal. And we must remember that the Commissioners
voted in August to let the JPower deal move forward even while
complaining that they didn't like it. So we cannot count on the
Commission to do the right thing, and we now have to apply major
pressure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to demand that they
reject the plant.

All of this makes it crucial that you take a look at the attached 
coalition Statement of Support and send it to us right away if you and 
your group agree.

To sign on, either send us a return email indicating you/your group's
agreement, and with your/your group's contact information in that email.

Or, print, fill out and mail the form to:

Our City
1028-A Howard St.
San Francisco, CA  94109

Working together, we can stop this deadly, environmentally destructive
plant from being built in San Francisco, and then move rapidly to shut
down Mirant!

Looking forward to your reply and solidarity. (Please call me at the
number below if you have any questions.)

Eric Brooks
Campaign Coordinator - Our City - http://our-city.org
Co-Chair - SF Green Party Sustainability Working Group
415-756-8844

previously I wrote:

Hi,

Enough critical mass, and promising new developments, have now arisen
around halting the proposed Bayview natural gas Combustion Turbine power
plant, that it is time to strike while the iron is hot and form a broad
coalition to -stop- the plant. (See 'Recent Developments' below my
contact information.)

I've also gotten enough buy-in from the local Sierra Club chapter, that
they too are helping build the campaign to stop the power plant. We will
need a strong alliance of both Bayview environmental justice organizers
and mainstream environmental groups to finally put the nails in the
coffin of this plant.

This email is to invite you, and Ahimsa's campaign, to officially join
the coalition.

We need to have a coalition meeting soon, so please respond within the
week, and let me know if/when you are available over the next week or
two, to join in that organizing meeting.

I'm looking forward to working with you to stop the power plant.

peace

Eric Brooks
Campaign Coordinator
Our City
http://our-city.org
415-756-8844

Other Recent Developments:

1) In August 2007, the Board of Supervisors approved the laying, by
2010, of the Transbay power cable, which will bring San Francisco 400
new megawatts of electricity capacity from an entirely new and
independent geographical direction. This capacity is enough to
completely eliminate the need for both the existing Mirant Potrero Hill
plant -and- the proposed gas turbine plant.

2)Shortly after the Mayor, Supervisor Maxwell, Supervisor
Peskin, The City Attorney, and The San Francisco Utilities Commission
(SFPUC) staff, tried to quickly ram through the power plant approval, 4
of the 5 SFPUC -Commissioners- said that they do not want the plant to
be installed and directed SFPUC General Manager Susan Leal and her staff
to bring any proposed installation contract back before the
Commissioners for approval instead of sending it directly to the Board
of Supervisors. Leal agreed in a public hearing to do so.

3) At the September 25, 2007 SFPUC public hearing, Commissioner Richard
Sklar said that he now believes the combined impact of the Transbay
cable and a PG&E proposal to alter electricity load distribution and so
reduce electricity demand, will likely be enough to convince state
agencies to allow the Mirant plant to be closed -without- building the
Combustion Turbine plant. Sklar directed staff to follow up on the
matter and prepare a proposal to take to the State California
Independent System Operator (Cal ISO) and with that proposal apply to
have Cal ISO cancel the plan to install the Combustion Turbines.

4) The SFPUC also recently released a request for information and
comments, and will soon be taking bids, on the Board approved Community
Choice renewable energy project, which will build -another- 360
megawatts of completely clean, renewable electricity capacity by around
2011. This is -also- enough to make both power plants unnecessary, and
combined with the Transbay cable capacity, makes the idea of continuing
to run fossil fuel power plants in San Francisco completely ridiculous.

5) A lawsuit has been filed at the Bay Area Air Quality Management
District to reverse approval of the Combustion Turbine plant, because
the U.S. EPA, by court order, must now start regulating CO2 emissions as
air pollution, and this enforcement may well make building another
fossil fuel power plant in San Francisco illegal under the Clean Air Act.

6) Finally, for its own selfish reasons, even PG&E has come out opposing
the Combustion Turbine plant (because it doesn't want any competition
for its monopoly on power production and sales).

So - The scales are finally tipping in our favor toward stopping this
unacceptable plant.

Let's tip them all the way!

- Eric Brooks





-- 
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate 
themselves." – Che Guevara
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: STOPPP!.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 55037 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://list.sfgreens.org/pipermail/sustainability/attachments/20071027/79190277/attachment-0001.pdf