[August 1, 2008 / No. 987]

I Left My Environmental Racism in San Francisco

San Francisco is the kind of place where people not only want to have their cake and eat it too, they also want that cake to be delicious yet calorie-free, gourmet but inexpensive.

It's the kind of place where people espouse the virtues of organic products, but fight to prevent a Whole Foods from moving into their neighborhood because of traffic concerns. And it's the kind of place where the rights of minority groups are vigorously protected, unless you're unlucky enough to be a cigarette smoker, military recruiter or, God forbid, a Republican.

Nowhere has San Francisco's want-it-all-except-for-the-icky-stuff attitude been more apparent than in its vacillation on the Potrero power plant.

First, the city spent six years and millions of dollars on a plan to shut down Mirant's aged Potrero facility. Then, when it came time to approve the $263 million in funding for the plan to build a state-of-the-art peaking plant to replace Potrero, city leaders balked. After just two months of deliberation, they decided it would be wiser to retrofit Potrero.

Supporting the retrofit option represents a major policy shift. The shut down of Potrero, as was the closure of the now defunct Hunter's Point facility, is a key milestone in the city's energy action plan and a major environmental justice imperative.

Further, a new peaking plant -- which would be owned and operated by San Francisco -- was to be relied upon for resource adequacy if the city achieves its long-awaited goal of becoming a community choice aggregator.

To make the retrofit idea more politically palatable, San Francisco power brokers added this sweetener: a retrofitted Potrero is merely a temporary, short-term step as the city works on a plan to meet reliability requirements without any in-city, fossil-fuel powered generation (i.e. electricity without any of the spewing).

No one has said how long it will take to come up with and implement this "transmission-only" plan, how much it would cost, or if such a plan would pass the California Independent System Operator's litmus test for resource adequacy. Still just about everyone in San Francisco is embracing the (almost) power plant free future like it's the second coming of Jerry Garcia.

Not to be a buzz kill, but San Francisco's electricity has to come from somewhere. And sometimes that somewhere will be a fossil-fuel burning power plant in close proximity to people and wildlife.

The city of Pittsburg in Contra Costa County is home to six power plants. The Trans Bay Cable, scheduled for operation in 2010, is being constructed for the express purpose of bringing electricity from Pittsburg to San Francisco.

Pittsburg resident Frank Gordon lives six blocks from Calpine's 500 MW Los Medanos Energy Center -- one of the sources that will feed into the Trans Bay Cable. Gordon doesn't see any justice in San Francisco's decision to go power plant free.

"I think it's selfish," said Gordon, who serves on the Contra Costa County Hazardous Materials Commission. "They don't want to build their own power plant so they're giving someone else the environmental disadvantage."

It would be one thing if residents of Pittsburg and neighboring Antioch, which has five power plants, were getting rich and fat off power production. Hell, anyone with five or more power plants in their community should be living like a Dubai sheik. But apparently that's not the case. "The residents get no advantage whatsoever," Gordon said.

The local smelt population is not feeling the love either. Last year the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta sued Mirant and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating the Endangered Species Act. The group said the intake structures on the company's Contra Costa and Pittsburg power plants are harming threatened aquatic species, including the Delta smelt.

Bolstering the coalition's claim is a 2007 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, which concludes "entrainment of fish at the power plants at Pittsburg and Antioch is potentially a major source of mortality, especially of larval fish, that could significantly contribute to the pelagic organism decline."

When San Franciscans use power, they contribute, however inadvertently, to the degradation of human and environmental health. The question of whether it matters if this degradation occurs in San Francisco or in Frank Gordon's backyard is worthy of close examination.

To truly feel good about their energy policy choices, San Franciscans need to look beyond city limits and factor in the down stream impacts. They may find there is no perfect, icing-on-the-cake solution, and tolerating some icky in-city generation to satisfy their own power consumption is the most socially just, environmentally responsible way to go [Leora Broydo Vestel].

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