Tear Down the Redondo AES Power Plant
New California law requires Redondo's power plant to drastically reduce or phase out the use of ocean water for cooling by 2020. AES has filed its plan to build a new Redondo power plant. Construction would be nine years - from 2015 to 2024.
We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to rid our waterfront of this blighting eyesore. We hope you will join us in the crusade to tear down the power plant!
Just ten months after AES submitted their plan to build a new power plant in Redondo, our City Council took the bold and decisive action to invite in the power regulating agencies so the Council can understand the process of power plant permitting… in April.
And just a mere five months after asking the City Attorney what Redondo’s options would be and over a year after Councilman Brand made a motion to study these options, our forward leaning City Council asked the City Attorney to present their options… in April.
And then only three months after residents submitted a No Power Plant lawn sign for approval by the city, the City Attorney committed to have an opinion… in April…after he deals with the absolutely critical remote bingo issue.
Despite giving AES hours in November to present their case for a new power plant, our pro-resident City Mayor and three of the four Councilmen present, then made passionate arguments against hearing from the State Coastal Conservancy’s independent consultant until … some later date to be determined…maybe, they’re not sure yet.
Oh, did I mention that this consultant is the independent power expert who concluded that the AES Redondo power plant is no longer needed?
BUT, Mayor Gin said if the Coastal Conservancy consultant gets to speak, the City must give equal opportunity to AES. Really? Didn’t AES already speak for three hours in November? Where was the fair opposition representation at that meeting? The three minutes a resident gets? Is that equal time to a multi-hour power point presentation? Really????
In fact, Councilman Matt Kilroy, ignoring five corroborating state reports and a second independent consultant’s affirmation of the first consultant’s findings, began to critically attack the consultant’s findings… without setting a date to even hear the consultant’s response.
Where is Councilman Kilroy’s critical assessment of the multiple hour AES brief? You know, the one where AES suddenly revealed the power plant would be half the size of what they submitted in their plan to the state. The one in which they show the new plant closer to Catalina Avenue, just tens of feet from offices and across the street from a neighborhood. The one where AES said 35 foot tall buildings would hide their 80 foot tall new power plant from public view. The one where they claimed the new power plant would only run at 15.6% of capacity after spending over half a billion dollars to build it… or was that 25% run time, or was it 30% run time???? Who knows they used all three figures during their presentation… The presentation where AES stated they would rebuild their half billion dollar new plant in just two years… contradicting the 9 years they show in the plan they submitted to the state and the seven years they project to rebuild their Huntington Beach plant. Why is Kilroy attacking the consultant who shows we don’t need the power plant while giving the AES dog and pony show, riddled with contradictions, a free pass????
It does not take a rocket engineer to see what is going here. Stretch it out… Make motions like you are really doing something… Attack, ignore, or denigrate the city, state and federal evidence that supports eliminating our unneeded, blighting, polluting power plant…
Meanwhile, despite claims from Councilman Aust, AES is forging ahead. You can find their correspondence with the California Public Utilities Commission on the web asking to accelerate the contracting process. They have telegraphed their intent to file their application for a new plant to the California Energy Commission sometime between April and June. Good thing our City officials will understand the process after it is already well in motion.
The power plant will be a done deal by the time this council gets around to voting on any substantive action…if they ever get there at all. Is that City Council inefficiency, ineptitude, or malfeasance…? You decide.
The Council Meetings are nothing more than a show. Our Council will not represent us. They ridicule us privately and publicly. It is obvious; the ONLY viable recourse for residents who oppose the power plant is to take matters into our own hands. If we don’t want a new power plant, we must phase it out by a resident ballot initiative.
BBR and NoPowerPlant are moving forward on this ballot initiative…but we need your financial support. If you are against the power plant, put your money where your mouth is…. You can contribute at www.nopowerplant.com. It’s the best investment you can make in our city’s future.
This past Sunday, Eric Pendergraft, president of AES Southland and David Sundstrom, speaking for NoPowerPlant.com, each provided a 30 minute presentation on the proposed new AES Redondo power plant to the members of the PV Peninsula Democratic Club.
During the discussion, Mr. Pendergraft stated that NoPowerPlant statements included “a number of inaccuracies”. When the Democratic Club’s Program Director asked him to be more specific, Mr. Pendergraft changed the subject. Hmmm…. You would think he would have at least one example, if he were bold enough to make such a public accusation. Could it be AES is afraid that we would substantiate our statements and make AES look even worse than they already do?
It is also interesting to note that concern about the power plant and its impacts cross party lines. Indeed, NoPowerPlant membership and leaders are nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. What is also noteworthy, is that locals are willing to cross party lines to vote for candidates who oppose the unneeded power plant.
Contrast this to Redondo, where AES plans to build 630MW of generating capacity and increase plant run times 300% to 600%. And if the new Redondo plant runs at 60% (the percentage other new power plants of this size are permitted for) the run time goes up 1,200%. No matter which scenario you believe, emissions will increase substantially over Redondo.
While Redondo’s power plant has incompatible high density residential, senior housing, hotel, business and recreational uses on four sides of its property lines; AES Huntington Beach is surrounded by:
- no development to the west,
- a wetlands to the south,
- an industrial warehouse complex to the east and
- a parking lot and dirt strip to the north
Why increase pollution at a plant tightly surrounded by incompatible uses and reduce it at a plant surrounded by open, unused space; other industrial uses; and a parking lot?
In Huntington, the nearest housing to the east is over 3000 feet away… over half a mile away. It is zoned low density at 7 units per acre. The worst case is a corner of a trailer park about 500 feet away. In their Redondo plan presented to City Council in November of 2011, AES showed the new power plant will be within 100 feet of business offices and a new retail building, which are right across the street from medium residential development at 17 to 34 units per acre. Hermosa Beach population density is over 13,700 people per square mile. Redondo Beach population density is nearly 10,750 people per square mile. Huntington Beach is just 6,000 people per square mile. Why decrease pollution over the lower populated area and increase it over the more densely populated area?
To add insult to injury, the study on Once-Through-Cooling Plants called out Huntington Beach power plant as required for future grid reliability, but did not call out Redondo as required. Now seven separate state studies show power from AES Redondo is not required. Why increase pollution at a plant that is no longer even needed?
Our City Council is twiddling their thumbs…conveniently slow rolling any action on the power plant. No action means we get a new power plant.
It is now or never.
Residents must act quickly if we are to stop AES from building a new power plant and spewing even more pollution over Redondo. If you want to free our waterfront from this uneeded, polluting, blighting eyesore; please donate to our efforts to phase out the existing power plant forever. You can donate online at www.nopowerplant.com
In case you missed it, the West Basin Test Desal Plant killed 80% of the sea life at the Sea Lab in a chlorine accident. But this is not the only sea life the plant kills. Their intakes suck in eggs and larval sea life.
Now the West Basin has been touting their use of “wedge wire” screens at the sea water intakes and how that will save sea life from being sucked into their doom. Unfortunately, their testing to date shows that the screens are ineffective.
In two cases the unprotected intake sucked in FEWER eggs and larva than the screened intakes. And in two cases the finer 1 mm screen sucked in more sea life than the coarser 2 mm screen. Four failures out of the 7 times samples were taken on the same days. Not a good performance record. This data points to the conclusion that the screens are ineffective in protecting eggs and larval sea life. The best you can say is that the results are inconclusive. Oh and the data is incomplete, because they do not measure sea life trapped against the wedge wire screens on the outside. The desalt plant occasionally back flows to clear the screens of seaweed and stuck dead eggs and larval sea life. Those numbers are not captured in their testing.
In order to desalinate seawater, it has to be pumped up to about 800 psi to force it through the reverse osmosis membranes. This takes a huge amount of power. The system then has to get rid of the extremely salty water that does not make it through the membranes. This is not good for the sea life, so it is mixed with recycled fresh water. West Basin has not released how much recycled fresh water is used in the process, but obviously that decreases the efficiency of the process. And now we see that even with their wedge wire screens, eggs and larval sea life is going to get killed. And the more water you produce, the more sea life will be impacted.
AES must repower because they are no longer allowed to use sea water for cooling. It was killing too many fish. Building a desalt plant in Redondo will increase the cost of water, add industrial eyesore on our waterfront (8 acres worth for their smallest version of the plant), eat up lots of power and recycled water, and kill the fish we were trying to save by stopping the sea water cooling.
It’s not rocket science to draw the conclusion that desal makes no sense.
AES, the company that runs Redondo’s power plant, sent a letter to the City responding to questions brought up during their new power plant presentation to city council. It turns out, this letter confirms many of the points that NoPowerPlant and Building a Better Redondo have advertised publicly.
The current power plant rarely runs and is not needed
The numbers provided by AES in the letter corroborates Energy Commission reports that the plant runs at very low run rates. According to the AES letter, the AES plant ran at less than 6 percent of capacity in 2009. This bolsters the argument that the power plant is not needed. There are now seven reports by state agencies projecting out as far as 2021, that demonstrate, even under worse case scenarios, we have excess power generation capacity in our area of the power grid without any power generation in Redondo.
The new plant will run more and thus will produce more pollution
AES’s tag line is that the new plant will be cleaner and greener. This is misleading. According to AES’s letter, running at under 6 percent of capacity, our current plant produced 5.23 tons of particulate air pollution. Yes, that is 5.23 tons of particles finer than a human hair’s diameter. AES’s numbers show that a plant half the size of the current plant, running at 25 percent of capacity would produce 10.59 tons of particulate pollution. That is 10.59 tons of pollution that is bad for the young, the elderly, those with pre-existing heart and lung problems and those who work out outdoors pumped right out into some of the most densely populated coastline in California.
But AES’ numbers do not add up
I challenge AES’s numbers here.
NRG submitted their emissions projections to the state on the new power plant they are building in El Segundo. This new plant is about the same size as what AES is advertising. The NRG plant is planned at 530MW and AES is saying their new plant will be 630 MW. According to its emissions projections, NRG plans to run the new plant at 60 percent capacity. Several other new plants we have investigated of this size are all submitting their environmental impacts assuming 60 percent run rates. In its letter, AES made calculations for the new plant running at just 25 percent of capacity. Hmmm. Will AES really invest over half a billion dollars to build a new plant and then limit its run time to just 25 percent? I don’t think so.
Additionally, if you believe AES’ letter, you would have to conclude that the brand new NRG power plant being built in El Segundo will run dirtier than AES plant finished in the late ’60s. The emissions projections submitted by NRG to the state show that their 530MW power plant, running at 60 percent of capacity, will produce 51 tons of particulate pollution per year. If we adjust that to 25 percent run rate, that would be 21.6 tons of annual particulate pollution. Would AES have us believe that a brand new plant, smaller than AES’ new Redondo plant, will produce over twice the pollution than AES has quoted using their current 1960’s plant pollution rates? Something smells rotten here, and it is not just the pollution AES spews on the few occasions the plant runs. I don’t buy it. And neither should you.
If you extrapolate the new NRG plant emissions to the new Redondo plant size at a 25 percent run rate, the amount of particulate pollution produced would be 49,461 pounds or 24.7 tons—more than 230 percent of what AES reports in their letter.
And let’s assume AES would really run at the 60 percent run rate that other power plants of its size are advertising. Then the amount of particulate pollution would jump to a whopping 59 tons! That’s just particulate pollution. Using NRG’s emissions, a new AES plant running 60 percent would produce 110 tons of nitrogen oxides, 9 tons of sulfur dioxides, 200 tons of carbon dioxide, 37 tons of volatile organic compounds, and 82 tons of ammonia. Mmmm-mmm, sounds great to me!
What’s the City doing about it?
Nothing. And doing nothing means we get a new power plant.
We have shown the City the state agency reports that show the power plant is not needed. We have shown them the pollution and health impacts; and, the City itself has produced reports on the negative impacts of the power plant. The reports call the power plant the “major blighting influence” in the harbor. The reports show negative financial impacts to residents, businesses and the city. The reports call the power plant “incompatible” with surrounding uses. And the reports show how to rezone the property to phase out the power plant. Since we don’t need the power, and the City knows of all these horrible impacts, how can they sit there do nothing?
Several cities have successfully fought repowering their antiquated power plants. In each case, the City made strong resolutions and enacted policy documents opposing the new power plants.
Councilman Aust has exclaimed he needs more data and the time is not right for the city to act. Councilman Diels has advertised the ludicrous claim that our Council cannot do anything because of their “quasi-judicial” role. Odd how Oxnard, San Francisco, and Chula Vista have all passed resolutions and policies against a new power plant, but somehow our City Council has a unique, special “quasi-judicial role” that no other city has that prevents them from taking action. Forgive me, but I’m flying the malarkey flag on that one.
The clock is ticking and the City’s current course of action plays right into AES’s hand.
What can we do?
Since our Council will not act, the residents need to take charge. Going to our Council has proven to be a waste of time. Residents cannot pass a city resolution, but we can change the zoning to phase out the power plant.
NoPowerPlant and BBR are working together to rezone the power property through a ballot initiative. A first draft of the proposed zoning is posted on the NoPowerPlant blog. We have raised about $15,000 of the $35,000 we need for the legal services to finalize this initiative.
If you oppose a new power plant, the most effective single thing you can do is go towww.NoPowerPlant.com and make a donation to the legal fund.
The California Court of Appeal dismissed the City of Redondo’s appeal of BBR’s court victory that forced the city to put Measure G on the ballot in accordance with the City Charter. The Court also affirmed the previous court ruling that the City had to pay BBR’s legal fees that accrued during the course of that case. The court also upheld the amount awarded to BBR for legal fees and validated the original judgement that accepted the hourly rate and hours charged by BBR’s lawyer as reasonable. Further the Appelate Court allows BBR to recover its legal costs related to the City’s appeal.
“The appeal from the judgement is dismissed, and the order granting attorney fees is affirmed. BBR is to recover costs on appeal.”
In its appeal the City asked the Court to reverse the original court mandate to put Measure G on the the Ballot in accordance with the City Charter. However, since the city had already complied with the original court order by putting Measure G on the ballot, the City’s request was moot:
“The reversal sought by appellants would be an exercise in futility because the election BBR sought has already taken place as ordered by the trial court.”
The City asked the court to reduce the reimburesment of BBR’s legal fees contending that they were excessive. The Appelate judges disagreed with the City’s characterization of the fees as “excessive”:
“The trial court was fully cognizant of the quality of the services performed, the amount of time devoted to the case and the efforts of counsel.“
The Appelate judges went on quoting a previous ruling:
“Allowing properly documented attorneys’ fees to be cut simply because a losing party is a governmental entity would defeat the purpose of the private attorney general doctrine … and would also incentivize governmental entities to negligently or deliberately run up a claimant’s attorneys’ fees, without any concern for consequences.”
What is truly unfortunate here is the City Council could have avoided all the legal costs had they put Measure G on the ballot in the first place. The City Council knew they were at risk when they voted against putting Measure G on the ballot. The City Council also knew residents wanted to vote on major land use changes like Measure G both from the outcome of the Measure DD election and the public testimony of over 100 residents on the Measure G debate. During this public testimony the public made it very clear they were willing to go to court over the issue. By ignoring the residents and choosing to try to use a loophole to avoid following the City Charter, the City Council is at fault for all these charges.
And to add insult to injury, the City’s attempt to avoid paying BBR’s legal fees has driven up legal costs on both sides even higher. With the Appelate Court’s ruling, the City is now responsible for all of those additional costs.
It saddens me as a resident, that our elected officials were willing to ignore the expressed will of their constituents and at the same time risk so much expense just to avoid putting a zoning change on the ballot.
Last night Councilman Diels and I briefed the Manhattan Beach Womens’ Republican Club on Redondo’s Power Plant. What became evident was Councilman Diels has no plan to do anything. And doing nothing means we get a new power plant.
When Councilman Diels talks, it is the voice of AES that comes out.
Councilman Diels went on for 20 minutes in a rambling rant that presented no path forward. Several times he attacked myself and our supporters. He called everyone opposed to the power plant NIMBY’s. Then he tried to twist misreported resident quotes from City minutes from 2004 in an attempt to prove residents were for the power plant. He then basically said the vote for Measure G was a vote to continue the power plant. Oh yeah, he conveniently forgot to mention the 2005 vote where residents voted for a park on this site with NO power plant…. oh that’s nothing more than a minor detail.
Councilman Diels continued with his stream of disjointed consciousness saying the way to get rid of the power plant is not to oppose it with state agencies, but rather to talk to AES. Yeah right. AES is going to not build a power plant because Diels says “pretty please”. I, for one, am not holding breath on that approach. If it is that simple, why has Diels not already approached them???? (By the way, talking with AES was the first thing we did. That resulted in nothing.) Diels went on saying AES was open to moving the plant to another community. Two things on this:
- We do NOT advocate moving the eyesore, economic impacts and health and environmental impacts into any of our neighboring cities. The power from this plant is not needed, it should just go away.
- It is clear that AES’ intent is to build a new plant on the current site (not some other site in another city) despite Councilman Diels’ attempt at misdirection of our efforts and attention.
Councilman Diels then held up a book that showed a graph that depicted that there will be gas fired power plants in 2050…. Not sure what that has to do with our plant where the power is unnecessary according to seven state agency studies and reports.
Diels even resorted to parroting AES’s baseless fear mongering. He tried use AES’s
argument that the power plant was needed to power electric vehicles of the future. He obviously failed to read the CEC projections through 2022 that show electric vehicle power demand for more power is offset 5200% by energy saving buildings and appliances and 1000% by residential solar generation. Oops…
Diels tried to bamboozle the crowd by saying the Council could not take a position on a zoning change prior to a vote. That’s interesting since there is a 2004 city report on how to change zoning to phase out our power plant. Another piece of evidence that Mr. Diels conveniently ignores in his argument to do nothing.
And then, believe it or not, Councilman Diels tried to paint that keeping the power plant is only way to preserve our beautiful ocean view down 190th St – through the power lines and dominated by the power plant. (See the picture at the top of the this blog for the beautiful view down 190th). I couldn’t make this stuff up.
Diels then went further off the deep end and stated the way to shut down the power plant is to build nuclear powered cars. …really. I’m not making it up. This guy is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs….
Once again, Diels showed his true colors – when Diels talks it is AES speaking.
Here is what we know:
- New environmental regulations mean AES must shut down their current plant and build a new one. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to rid our waterfront of this blighting, polluting eyesore.
- Three communities have successfully fought to have their power plants shut down. They did it by making it clear to the CEC, CAISO , and CPUC that they did not want a polluting eyesore rebuilt in their communities.
- Zero communities have successfully gotten rid of their power plant by doing nothing. If we do nothing we will get a new power plant. And it will be with us for the forseeable future.
- Seven state agency reports and studies show that we do not need power from the AES Redondo plant for as long as any agency has projected into the future (2021) under their most worst case scenarios.
- Based on new power plants coming on line with the same technologies quoted by AES, our new plant will run more and produce more pollution than the current power plant. At a minimum the equivalent particulate pollution of over 200,000 cars.
- Views of an an 80 foot tall new power plant will not be blocked by 40 foot mini-storage buildings as AES would have us believe.
- The new zoning we have proposed will produce more city revenue and more jobs than a power plant.
It is obvious Diels is intentionally slow rolling any action by our City with regard to the AES Power Plant. Inaction plays into AES’s hand and ensures we will get a new power plant….unless residents take matters into their own hands.
This seems like a no-brainer:
- We don’t need the power.
- The power plant has proven negative economic, ecological and health impacts our community.
- We have have a once in a lifetime opportunity to rid ourselves of the power plant.
The obvious conclusion is our City should oppose a new power plant in Redondo. Why is our Council fighting this obvious conclusion?
The process for permitting a new power plant and granting AES a power contract will hit full steam this year. It is critical that we move decisively this year to let the CEC, CAISO, And CPUC know we do not want or need a power plant in Redondo Beach. The message is simple:
1. We don’t need the power, based on 7 state agency studies.
2. The property is closely surrounded on all sides by incompatible uses.
3. The plant has significant adverse affects fiscally, environmentally and health wise.
We had our first NoPowerPlant rally of thhe year yesterday and despite the weather we had a great turn out. Tuesday we are talking to one of the local Republican Clubs. Thursday we will be briefing the public at the Crowne Plaza. And we are scheduled to talk at a meeting of one of the PV. Democrat meetings. We are hitting 2012 running!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
As a grass roots volunteer organization concerned about our community and its future, most of our supporters have family obligations over the holiday season that take priority. So we powered down our activities from Thanksgiving through the new year. But now we are ramping back up.
Our first activity of 2012 is going to be a No Power Plant Rally.
Hope to see you at the rally! They are lots of fun!
Join us at the rally…it’s a fun way to get our message out!
Hope to see you there! The rallies are lots of fun!
Today the California State Coastal Conservancy released the findings of an independent consultant they hired to analyze whether the AES Redondo power plant is required for grid reliability.
The report assesses California Energy Commission (CEC) and California Independent Service Operator (CAISO) data including their latest 2021 power requirement projections and confirms the conclusion of BBR and NoPowerPlant.com – the AES Redondo power plant is not required for our grid reliability. According the report:
“Examination of LCRs [Local Capacity Requirements] and existing generation capacity in the Western LA Basin sub- area shows … that if the existing units at the Redondo Beach Generating Station were retired in any year after 2012, with no other retirements…, there would be enough remaining existing generation in the Western LA Basin sub-area to satisfy the projected LCR at least through year 2020. This conclusion holds even if no new generation is added and AES-SL builds none of the new combined-cycle facilities it references in its June 16, 2011 implementation plan for the Redondo Beach Generating Station. “
The report concludes that considering the new CAISO report, there would be 860MW of excess power generation capacity in 2021 without any power generation at AES Redondo.
AES officials stated in public testimony to the City Council that they will not build a power plant in Redondo if it is not needed. This report is just another in the list of documents that shows we do not need power from this plant. Will AES live up to their word? Or will we have to fight them?
Here is the report:
