potrero view

December 2009

Potrero Power Plant Citizens Task Force Fights the Good Fight

By Anthony Myers

If politicians and bureaucrats made policy decisions behind closed doors, citizens wouldn’t know what was being decided on their behalf.  That’s one reason why San Francisco has convened citizen’s advisory committees to monitor some City agencies.  Without such committees, “The politicians would be in complete charge,” said Joe Boss, who sits on the Potrero Power Plant Citizens Task Force.  “There would be a total vacuum if the Task Force wasn’t there.”

Of all of the organizations and politicians pushing to close one of California’s oldest and dirtiest power plants – and the Hunters Point Power Plant before it – the Potrero Power Plant Citizen Task Force has been the issue’s most consistent advocate.  Now in its tenth year, this group of citizens, business leaders and activists has been deliberate and persuasive in their approach to shuttering old power plants located in Bayview-Hunters Point and Dogpatch.  According to Boss, one of the Task Force’s main goals has been to clean-up or shut-down the Potrero Power Plant, which is owned by the Mirant Corporation.  “Why do we want a behemoth power plant in our backyard?” he said.  Additionally, the Task Force has been a “clearinghouse of ideas.  The Task Force has kept the dialogue going when politically it wasn’t that popular.”

The regulatory maze that the Task Force must navigate is formidable. Not only does it make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors, it regularly interacts with the California Energy Commission, Regional Water Control Board, San Francisco Public Utility Commission, and California Independent Systems Operator (Cal-ISO), among others.  Boss believes that Task Force members provide the City with an institutional memory that many elected bodies don’t have.  Over the past decade, Task Force members have mastered the pecking order of regulatory agencies, and developed working relationships with various civil servants.  

That work has paid-off.  Thanks in part to the Task Force’s relentless efforts, Cal-ISO recently agree to close the Potrero Power Plant’s largest unit once the Trans Bay Cable, a transmission line from the City of Pittsburg to the Central Waterfront, has demonstrated its ability to reliably provide electricity supplies, likely by the spring of next year.  Task Force member, View publisher and San Francisco Community Power executive director Steve Moss, attended one of Cal-ISO’s fall board meetings to remind the regulators what his neighbors wanted:  an end to the dirty, inefficient Potrero Power Plant.

 

Task Force Members 2009

Joe Boss, Community Relations (Bridge Housing, Norcal, Trans Bay Cable)

Philip DeAndrade, Task Force Chair, Owner, Goat Hill Pizza

Malik Looper, Member, San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee

Steve Moss, Executive Director, San Francisco Community Power

Richard Millet, Former President, Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association

Karen Pierce, Bayview Activist


Potrero Power Plant Citizens Task Force Time Line

1999:    Task Force created by San Francisco Board of Supervisors Leland Yee and Tom Ammiano.

2000:    Task Force meets for the first time.

2001:    Energy deregulation causes rolling blackouts.

2002:    Task force successfully fights against proposed Potrero Power Plant expansion.

2004:    Various “solutions” proposed to close the Potrero Power Plant, including City-owned generation and the Trans Bay Cable.

2006:    Hunters Point Power Plant closed.

2009:    Cal-ISO agrees to close the Potrero Power Plant largest unit.

 

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