Neighbors Fume Over Backing for Power Plant

As California struggles with a growing electricity crisis, regional air quality officials endorsed a proposed power plant in South Gate over the objection of neighbors and activists.

In a letter to state energy officials, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said preliminary tests indicate that the proposed 550-megawatt Nueva Azalea power plant will meet all air quality emission rules.

The proposed natural gas plant has generated strong objections in the heavily Latino, blue-collar city of South Gate because the community already endures the emissions of nearby industry as well as pollution from trains, diesel trucks and buses on local tracks, streets and the Long Beach Freeway.

A recent AQMD study found that the southeast Los Angeles County region has some of the highest levels of potential cancer-causing pollution in Southern California.

The letter sent Thursday by AQMD Executive Director Barry Wallerstein to the California Energy Commission angered environmental activists and neighboring city officials who are worried about the health effects of the power plant.

In his letter, Wallerstein said: “The AQMD believes that, given the present electricity crisis in California and the advancement of control technology resulting in ultra-low NOx emissions . . . the AQMD recommends that the California Energy Commission expedite the process of certification for this project.”

NOx (oxides of nitrogen) is a chemical that makes smog brown and creates fine particulate pollution that has been linked to respiratory illness, heart attacks and premature deaths.

The California Energy Commission, which has been reviewing the proposal for the $256-million plant and holding public hearings and workshops for five months, is expected to make a final decision in August.

Designed to be as large as Dodger Stadium, the privately operated plant would be south of Southern Avenue, close to the Long Beach Freeway, on what is now a truck depot.

Alvaro Huerta, an organizer for Oakland-based Communities for a Better Environment, called the AQMD letter disturbing, noting that the plant is expected to generate more than 100 tons of pollution per year.

“We would hope the AQMD would take a more stringent approach to protect a disadvantaged population,” he said.

The letter also was blasted by officials in Downey, a community downwind.

Downey City Manager Gerald Caton said he wonders how the AQMD can endorse the project when Downey has yet to receive important emission data that the city has requested.

“To have the AQMD blessing the plant in glowing terms seems nonsensical to me,” he said.

Robert Danzinger, founder of Sunlaw Energy Partners, the firm proposing to build and operate the plant, said the AQMD endorsement indicates that the plant will be a good neighbor.

“There is no question that it’s the cleanest plant proposed in the history of power plants,” he said.

In an interview Friday, AQMD chief Wallerstein spoke in similarly glowing terms, saying the plant could be “the cleanest natural gas power plant in the United States.”

Based on the project application, Wallerstein said the plant is expected to generate 1 part per million of NOx emissions, compared with about 9 ppm for most other natural gas power plants.

Wallerstein said the technology used at the plant will reduce emissions so much that AQMD will have trouble measuring the emissions.

Huerta, the community activist, said that regardless of the smog cutting advances, it is unfair to locate the plant in the mostly poor, Latino community of South Gate.

“It’s a health risk and it’s a matter of environmental justice that they want to put a plant in an area already overburden with industrial sources of pollution,” Huerta said.

The AQMD regulates air pollution from about 30,000 businesses in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Downey City Manager Caton said he was incensed that Wallerstein cited the electricity crisis in his letter of support for the project.

“When did the AQMD get into the electric business?” he asked.

Officials this week have been debating the effect of energy deregulation on power supplies. As recently as Thursday, the state was placed under a Stage 2 alert, meaning that energy reserves had dropped below 5% of total energy needs.

On Friday, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission responded to the crisis by imposing a temporary, partial cap on energy prices and ordered changes in the structure of the deregulated market.

Wallerstein’s letter of support for the power plant comes one day after the AQMD imposed a record setting $17-million fine on a Long Beach power plant that exceeded emission limits. That Long Beach plant, owned by AES Pacific, illegally spewed more than 1 million pounds of smog-forming emissions this year.