[Sustain] CT Update & Reminder, SFPUC City Hall Rm 400, 2:30pm Today (Wed, Oct 31)

[Eric Brooks]

Hi all,

First a quick update.

As expected we could not stop Maxwell's CT resolution from escaping the 
Land Use Committee on Monday. SFPUC staff spouted the same extremely 
clever and deceptive illusions that they presented to the SFPUC 
Commissioners, but the Committee members (Maxwell, McGoldrick and 
Sandoval) bought it. Infamous Health Dept. Director Mitch Katz was also 
on hand to claim with the SFPUC staff that the CTs would vastly decrease 
pollution, and he justified his statements in part by describing plans 
to both use street cleaners to suck particulates off of the streets, and 
to also buy pollution credits to technically offset the CTs' NOX 
emissions! Recall that this is the same sort of evil nonsense that Katz 
spouted about the Lennar construction site. Dr. Katz is fast becoming 
public health enemy #1. Katz and the SFPUC's Barbara Hale described 
these measures as resulting in a total zeroing out of of the pollution 
from the CTs. SFPUC Assistant GM Tony Irons claimed that the SFPUC's 
plan was to -never- turn on the CTs and to only have them available for 
emergencies! Looking at the JPower contract term sheet, that statement 
is clearly, blatantly false.

Yesterday, Tuesday Oct 30, Maxwell's resolution went before the full 
Board of Supervisors. Sierra Club, Our City, the SF Green Party, and 
APRI did extensive lobbying and succeeded in really shaking up the 
issue; and we came one vote away from getting a one week continuance on 
the resolution. Michela Alioto-Pier, Ross Mirkarimi, and Chris Daly 
stood strongly on our side, and in the first continuance vote Tom 
Ammiano, and Gerardo Sandoval had been sufficiently convinced to doubt 
that they sided with us on that vote. Throughout the hearing, Jake 
McGoldrick totally betrayed us and repeatedly threw softball questions 
to the SFPUC staff and strongly pushed for the CTs. Then, something 
shocking happened. After a very long hearing of several Supervisors 
asking tough questions of the SFPUC staff and being dealt the same 
extremely clever lies that the Committee had heard the day before, the 
Supervisors then prepared for a final vote. Mirkarimi and Ammiano first 
introduced an amendment to the resolution which mandated that Mirant be 
guaranteed to close before the CT's would be turned on. Then, at  the 
very moment the final vote was about to take place, Board President 
Supervisor Aaron Peskin suddenly announced from his podium that he had 
just heard from the Mayor's office that, AT THAT VERY MOMENT, they were 
completing negotiations with Mirant corporation to 'guarantee' that the 
Mirant plant would be shut down when Cal ISO released it from RMR 
status. Peskin went on to state that Mirant would be signing the 
agreement in about '27 minutes' AFTER the Board vote. Based only on this 
verbal hearsay by Peskin, the Board then took up the final vote, and 
Ammiano and Sandoval abandoned us on that final vote. This enabled the 
Resolution to pass 8 to 3 and sending a much stronger pro CT message to 
the SFPUC Commissioners for today's meeting. During the preceding 
dialog, SFPUC staff stated that the resolution needed to be passed that 
day, because the State Department of Water Resources had recently sent 
the SFPUC a letter saying that it would back out of its agreement to buy 
the electricity from the CTs unless the Board of Supervisors showed 
immediate support for the CTs. (SFPUC staff hadn't mentioned one word 
about this in the Land Use hearing.) This letter puts high pressure on 
the SFPUC Commissioners to approve the finalized JPower contract today.

The upshot of all this is that we who are in leadership on this campaign 
need to be in Room 400 today to strongly urge Sklar, Hochschild, 
Normandy, and Cane to stand firm with us and continue demanding another 
alternative to the CTs, especially if the Mayor was telling the truth 
and Mirant has agreed to close.

Our key arguments will likely best focus on Normandy's remaining three 
unresolved questions (assuming that Mirant has agreed to close) -

- Will the City have the power to mandate that the CT plant will never 
be turned on except in the case of peak power emergencies?

- Are these CTs the best option for -today- when there are likely other 
completely non-polluting alternatives available?

and

- How much will the CT plant cost the City? (And can we use that money 
to build an alternative solution instead.) (At this point the CTs will 
cost the City at least $60 million, up to $190 million total if we have 
to buy the CT electricity that PG&E has refused to buy, and $230-$500 
million if the City owned alternative that was put back on the table is 
chosen.)

The SFPUC staff claimed on Monday that Commissioner Sklar -will- be at 
the meeting, however after reviewing all of the hearing videos, I 
believe that this is still unclear. So we especially need to be there to 
demand that the vote be postponed until Sklar is present, if he is in 
fact out of town today.

Here are the details again for the SFPUC meeting:

*AGENDA
SPECIAL  MEETING
*
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
*2:30 P.M.  NOTE DIFFERENT DAY/START TIME*
City Hall, Room 400
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place

*ORDER OF BUSINESS*

1. Call to Order

2. Roll Call

*CLOSED SESSION*

3. Public comments on matters to be discussed in Closed Session.

4. Motion on whether to assert the attorney-client privilege regarding 
the matters listed below as Conference with Legal Counsel.

THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION WILL GO INTO CLOSED SESSION TO DISCUSS 
THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:

5. Conference with Real Property Negotiator -- Pursuant to Sunshine 
Ordinance Section 67.8 (a)(2), Govt. Code section 54956.8: Property:  
located at 25th Street and Maryland in San Francisco, California. (Hale)

Negotiator for the SFPUC:  Barbara Hale Negotiator:  JPower.

6. Conference with Legal Counsel -- Pursuant to California Government 
Code Section 54956.9 (b) and (c) and San Francisco Administrative Code 
Section 67.10 (d) (2) Anticipated Litigation:  As defendant. (Ambrose)

FOLLOWING THE CLOSED SESSION, THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION WILL 
RECONVENE IN OPEN SESSION.

7. Announcement following Closed Session.

8. Motion regarding whether to disclose the discussions during Closed 
Session.

9. Staff presentation, discussion and action related to matters 
addressed in the SFPUC Resolution No 07-0137, including the proposed San 
Francisco Electric Reliability Project (the Combustion Turbines (CTs) 
and related facilities), the JPower agreements and leases, and any 
related agreements, authorizations and permits required from other City 
Departments or federal, state or local agencies pertaining to this 
Project, and adopting findings pursuant to the California Environmental 
Quality Act. (Leal, Irons, Hale).

ADJOURNMENT of the Special Meeting

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