Some Officials Back Power Plants on Wetlands Area

Ventura County business and political leaders who fear more suffering from the statewide energy crisis said Wednesday they would welcome additional generators near the Ormond Beach and Mandalay power plants, even if it meant some wetlands might be harmed.

“I realize it’s a wetland, but we’re having blackouts [in the state] every day,” Ventura City Councilman Jim Monahan said. “Wake up, world. We’ve got to get real about this energy problem.”

The potential for building new generators at the Oxnard sites was revealed this week when Southern California Edison halted the sale of 307 acres of coastland near the plants to the California Coastal Conservancy. The properties compose the last undeveloped stretch of coastline in the county.

Environmentalists and some civic leaders have said they would fight any move toward more building at the sites, the subject of years of negotiations between the power company and the conservancy.

But state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) said he supported Edison in whatever it chose to do with its land. He stopped short of explicitly backing new building on the property, however.

“The property owner has the sole right [to the land], subject only to local zoning laws,” he said. “If anyone objects to a property owner’s plans for that property, they have the right to offer to buy it.” McClintock supports building new plants quickly across California.

“The state desperately needs [plants] immediately,” he said. “The governor has emergency authority to waive [some permitting] regulations, and I believe he should.”

If it means their livelihoods will be jeopardized, some local business leaders said, they would prefer to see construction on the beachfront property, which is already zoned for utilities. Jerry Bundy, plant manager at beauty supply maker Lander Co. in Camarillo, said he’s concerned about the state’s ability to continue providing service, even though his power hasn’t been interrupted for a while.

He believes regulators should be more accommodating when it comes to building generators, even if it’s unpopular with environmentalists.

“The public [in Southern California] just hasn’t been impacted yet,” he said. “The bills are going to start coming in there pretty quick. I think that will bring some changes in the thought process.”

Paul Strong, president of Poly-Tainer Inc. in Simi Valley, a company that makes plastic parts for cosmetic and medical packaging, said the county may need to be flexible to ensure that businesses can keep running.

“We need more reliable power in this county,” he said. “There’s a critical area where we have to satisfy environmentalists, but also the business and residential needs of the communities.”

Power from the plants goes into the statewide grid, but Monahan said it makes sense to expand at the Ventura County plants because the ocean and a nearby canal provide a convenient cooling system and because the transmission lines are already laid.

“To go somewhere else would be really stupid on their part,” Monahan said. “There are a lot of questions to ask, but it seems like an obvious point.”

Southern California Edison officials decided to halt the sale of the company’s two oceanfront properties last week, saying it would not be appropriate to move forward given the state’s energy crisis and the need for more power plants. The officials said they wanted to explore whether it made more sense to sell the properties for development of new plants rather than sell them as excess land for $15 million to the conservancy. The utility could either sell the parcels to the state to develop or to Reliant Energy, which owns the existing power plants at Mandalay and Ormond Beach.

But some local leaders said they would try to block any attempt to build a generator on the site.

“I’m counting on that being kept open space,” Supervisor Frank Schillo said. “They don’t have to build on the coast. They could build in other places. We’re getting the bum’s rush here when it comes to Edison.”

John Mungenast, head of the county Economic Development Collaborative’s high-tech advocacy group, said county business leaders should be focusing on conservation rather than building new plants locally. He added that with new generators in the permit process elsewhere, it may not even be necessary.

“We’ve got these power systems coming on the line in one, two, three years. Probably as soon as ours is delivered, there’ll be a surplus,” he said. “My own feeling is there are a lot of other places to build.”

Edison says there is room on both the Mandalay and Ormond Beach parcels to allow construction of plants of similar size, doubling the amount of electricity produced to a maximum of 4,000 megawatts. That is enough energy to supply 4 million homes, or about 16 times the number in Ventura County.