Carlsbad Acts to Stall Power Plant Plans

Though its political influence is limited, Carlsbad is trying to stall and perhaps help defeat a new 460-megawatt energy plant that San Diego Gas & Electric Co. is considering at its existing Encina plant.

The California Energy Commission has nearly total authority over power plants, but the City Council has countered with several actions to guarantee that its views are heard and that the Encina plant can’t be expanded, at least for a while.

“We’re not just going to roll over and say ‘It’s SDG&E;, and they can have what they want,’ ” Councilman John Mamaux said Wednesday.

After a public hearing Tuesday, the council voted 4 to 0 to approve a temporary ban on plant expansion, spend $150,000 to $300,000 for outside consultants to study an additional plant’s impact and declare the city an official participant in the commission’s deliberations.

The actions came a month after SDG&E; informed the city it would apply to the commission to build the new energy plant in one of five locations, including Carlsbad, to handle a 3% yearly increase in demand.

Other prospective sites are SDG&E;’s South Bay Power Plant, West Sycamore Canyon east of Miramar Naval Air Station, Imperial Valley in Imperial County, and Blythe in Riverside County.

During the council’s discussion Tuesday night, SDG&E; representative Karen Hutchens didn’t object to the temporary ban on expanding the Encina plant, but she asked that certain improvements to the existing operation be allowed. Regardless of the ban, it will take about two years for SDG&E;’s application to be processed by the commission.

At first, Carlsbad council members reacted with disfavor toward a second energy plant, estimated to cost $388 million, at the coastal Encina site. They argued that the city, with its existing power plant and odor-plagued Encina Water Pollution Facility, has done enough to serve the region. And they were annoyed that a state agency, the commission, could preempt local control.

With this week’s vote, however, the council has signaled that Carlsbad isn’t willing to let a new plant be approved without a fight, or at least a scrupulous examination.

By voting to request that the commission grant Carlsbad “intervenor status,” the city has basically demanded that it be fully included in any commission deliberations on the plant.

“We would actually become one of the players in the siting process,” City Manager Raymond Patchett said Wednesday.

The council felt that hiring consultants to help city staff determine the project’s impact would give Carlsbad greater credibility in arguing before the commission.

And placing an emergency moratorium on increasing the size, location or generating capacity of the Encina plant would gain time to study the project’s consequences. The council will soon hold hearings to consider extending the moratorium, now only 45 days, to about two years.

Mayor Bud Lewis said Wednesday that the measures will help protect the city against hasty action.

“We don’t want to be railroaded into something that’s going to be detrimental to the community,” he said, adding that “a majority of citizens feel they (SDG&E;) should expand elsewhere.”

Council members aren’t the only ones skeptical about the plant.

Mario Monroy, chairman of the Carlsbad Beach Erosion Committee, warned the council that expanding the coastal energy plant would further erode the beach and damage the Agua Hedionda Lagoon.

He wrote to the council, “This is a matter of extreme urgency potentially adversely affecting Carlsbad’s already sand-starved beaches, the coastal lagoon sensitive ecosystem and the sand transport processes for the entire lagoon.”