potrero view

October 2009

Struggle to Close Potrero Power Plant Continues

By Anthony Myers

Although this summer Mirant Corporation reached an agreement with City Attorney Dennis Herrera to shutter the Potrero Power Plant, last month the California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO) authorized continuing operation of the plant until the end of 2010.  In adopting its staff’s recommendations, the Cal-ISO board acknowledged that the plant’s largest unit will no longer be needed once the Transbay Cable, a transmission line from the City of Pittsburg to the Dogpatch neighborhood, is operational this spring.  

“The best news out of the hearing is that ISO staff confirmed they are drafting contractual language that will end the must-run contract on the Potrero Unit Three smokestack upon spring 2010 completion of the Transbay Cable.  But staff was non-committal on the timeline for removing must-run designation on Units Four, Five, and Six,” said Joshua Arce, executive director of Brightline Defense.  Unit Three is the plant’s backbone, responsible for almost all of its annual output and associated polluting air and greenhouse gas emissions.  Four, Five, and Six serve as diesel back-ups, whose use is constrained by air quality rules.  The entire facility discharges superheated water into the bay, in a likely to be banned practice called “once-through cooling.”

In late-October Cal-ISO will formalize its must-run contract with the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission.  However, that won’t stop politicians and neighborhood activists from continuing their efforts to close all of one of the oldest and dirtiest plants in the state as soon as possible.  “The San Francisco Public Utility Commission wants Mirant gone, everyone wants it gone but Cal-ISO,” said Philip De Andrade, who chairs the Potrero Power Plant Citizen’s Task Force. “Cal-ISO is a political organization because the board of governors is appointed by the governor.”

“It’s a dead plant walking,” said Steven Moss, who also serves on the task force, and leads San Francisco Community Power, a Dogpatch-based nonprofit.  “The entire plant should close within thirty days of the Transbay Cable becoming operational.  At that point Cal-ISO will no longer be able to ignore the facts on the ground.  We don’t need it, we don’t want it.  It’s time to move on to a greener era.”

Neither Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which has stated that it no longer believes the plant is needed, nor Mirant Corporation, which, in its deal with the City, agreed to advocate for closure of Unit Three by the end of 2010, spoke at the Cal-ISO meeting at which the plant’s “must-run” contract was extended.

After the Cal-ISO board rendered its decision the City Attorney’s Office continued to press for plant closure at the San Francisco Bay Region Water Resources Control Board (SFBWRCB), which was considering whether to continue to allow Mirant to rely on once-through cooling.  “We made the same comments we made before,” said Deputy City Attorney Theresa Mueller. “After December 31, 2010, Mirant should not use once-through cooling at all.”  However, SFBWRCB agreed to extend the power plant’s permit for another year, according to William L. Rukeyser, SFBWRCB spokesman.  

The San Francisco Bay Region’s posture stands in stark contrast to the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board (SDRWQB), which is threatening to close the 49-year old South Bay Power Plant – which also relies on once-through cooling, one of 19 in the state with such a system – even in the face of Cal-ISO’s insistence that the plant is needed to maintain reliability.  Echoing San Francisco politicians’ and community leaders’ concern about the Potrero Power Plant, the South Bay “…facility is an anachronism.  It shouldn’t be here,” said Richard Wright, SDRWQB chairman.

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