Selling Electricity Brings City Profit--and Pollution

For the last five weeks, Glendale’s Grayson power plant has been belching half a ton of pollutants into the air almost daily, more than twice previous limits.

The same is true for many of the other 14 power plants in Southern California, as the haves generate power, sometimes round-the-clock, for the have-nots.

The generators, some of them nearly 50 years old and once considered too dirty for regular use, now keep electricity flowing to residents around the state. And those living downwind are subjected to twice as much air pollution as before California’s energy crunch.

Not every Glendale resident is happy.

“You don’t want anyone to get stuck with a rolling blackout, but we get struck with the pollution,” Jerold Petrosian said Sunday as he and his family bought plants at a nursery across the street from the power plant. “It is a tough decision.”

Not so for Ignacio Troncoso, director of Glendale Water & Power. “There is a pretty decent trade-off,” he said. “Helping our neighbors in the state to keep their lights on.”

A USC specialist warned that increased power-plant emissions raise the risks of asthma and other lung ailments in both young and old. “There is a potential for more emergency room visits, more people seeing their doctors and more hospitalizations this summer,” said Dr. Henry Gong, professor of medicine who specializes in the health effects of air pollution.

With extended hours, the Glendale generators are emitting as much as 995 pounds of pollutants into the air during peak demand--more than double the old 390-pounds-a-day limit, city and air quality officials said.

The other 14 power plants in Southern California also have more than doubled their overall emissions, according to preliminary figures from the South Coast Air Quality Management District. As a group, the plants emitted a total of 2,045 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxide in the first three months of 2001, compared with 905 tons for the same period last year.

The AQMD hearing board Tuesday eased pollution controls so Glendale may continue to generate excess electricity for sale to the energy-starved state. Under the plan, Glendale may run three of its old steam boilers around-the-clock to meet the state’s energy demand. Usually, these boilers, hidden behind a tall brick wall, sit idle except during the peak summer demand times because they are inefficient and costly to run.

Glendale, like Burbank and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, continues to produce electricity at city-owned plants. The cities opted not to participate in deregulation, a decision that has shielded their residents, by and large, from the huge utility rate hikes and rolling power outages experienced elsewhere. But they will pay to ease the state’s 3-month-old energy emergency by breathing dirtier air.

Air quality officials said power plants contribute about 3% of the 900 tons of pollution emitted into the air daily in the four-county AQMD region; about 70% of the pollution comes from vehicles. And in recent years, many of the region’s municipal power generators have been updated with pollution-control devices that slash emissions.

Glendale’s three steam turbines, built between 1953 and 1963, are inefficient by today’s standards but they are 85% cleaner after the city pumped millions of dollars into upgrading them. They will be even cleaner, city officials say, with more retrofitting.

Under the plan, Glendale must reinvest profits from energy sales--estimated at $3 million to $5 million--in equipment to reduce future emissions at the plant, and in community-based programs, such as mobile asthma clinics and efforts to reduce school bus emissions.

The city plans to sell as much as 50 megawatts of power, enough to serve 50,000 homes. Under the decision Tuesday, pollution limits resume Jan. 1, or when the energy emergency ends.

In Los Angeles, power officials said they don’t expect to exceed AQMD caps because they are adding pollution controls at two of the city’s four power plants. Although they will produce more electricity, they should not produce any more nitrogen oxide, which in sunlight and heat forms ozone, said Angelina Galiteva, DWP’s director of strategic planning.

“We will have much cleaner equipment in place by June,” she said.

Even the environmentalists are trying to balance the risks.

“We realize we have a problem this summer. We have to run these plants,” said Sheryl Carter, a senior policy analyst for the National Resources Defense Council.

Carter said natural-gas-powered generators, like the ones in Glendale, are “a far superior solution to diesel generators,” which produce 50 to 100 times the emissions and would be turned on in businesses across the state if energy is unavailable from other sources.

“We are trying to make sure the environment overall is made whole,” she said.

Carl Zichella, regional staff director for the Sierra Club, said the generators should be run as a last resort. He urged consumers to unplug spare refrigerators and change light bulbs to reduce the state’s overall energy demand.

“The only thing that is going to work to offset air pollution is efficiency,” he said. Otherwise, “we will pay not only with higher rates but also with our health.”

In neighboring Burbank, city officials are preparing for peak summer energy demands, when they expect to sell about 10% of their locally produced electricity outside the city.

This week, all the old generators at the Magnolia power plant near the Golden State Freeway were shut down for repairs that city officials hope to complete by summer so they can make more electricity. The city had all but stopped operating the power plant over the past decade because it was cheaper to buy electricity from out of state.

Even with the doubling of emissions, Ron Davis, general manager of Burbank Water & Power, said pollution from the plant is virtually undetectable when measured against automobile fumes from the adjoining freeway and dust that blows from the hillsides surrounding the city.

“For four or five years, we have been polluting Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Washington and Oregon, importing power to Los Angeles,” Davis said, listing the energy-producing states that typically provide the bulk of Southern California’s power. “We are returning the favor.”

Profits from those outside sales, Davis said, will help hold down utility costs for local users.

“I think most people would take a little more smog to guarantee there are no rolling blackouts,” he said. “But it’s not an easy question.”