Advocates Accuse DWP of High Pollution Levels

A consumer group on Thursday branded the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power “the dirtiest municipal utility west of the Mississippi,” citing its reliance on coal and nuclear power to provide customers with electricity.

The California Public Interest Research Group, a statewide organization, compared the DWP’s energy portfolio with those of other public and private utilities, and found that the DWP’s is heavily stacked with electricity from power plants that produce high levels of pollution or that burn fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Only 2% of the city utility’s electricity came from so-called renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, compared with an average of 12% statewide, the group said in its report. Roughly 50% came from coal power and 12% from nuclear plants.

“The dirty secret here in Los Angeles is that our energy is very polluting,” Martin Schlageter of the Coalition for Clean Air said during a press conference on the steps of City Hall. “It pollutes our skies, and it pollutes our water.”

The issuing of the report, titled “Clean Energy at the Crossroads,” coincided with the start of hearings by the Los Angeles City Council on the city’s power supplies and with discussion of a critical audit of the DWP’s Green Power program.

The program is intended to offer customers who volunteer to pay slightly higher utility rates for clean energy, and to use the extra proceeds to enlarge the city’s renewable power portfolio. But the audit by City Controller Laura Chick found that, while the program has spent millions marketing itself, it has failed to invest in any actual new sources of green power.

“An excessive amount of money has been spent on marketing and promotions without any new proceeds in renewable energy,” Chick told a council committee Thursday.

City Council members have been discussing ways to bolster the city’s renewable energy sources, including a proposal by Council President Alex Padilla to use $95 million from the sale of the city’s share in a coal-burning power plant to purchase cleaner energy.

David H. Wiggs, the general manager of the DWP, told council members that the municipal utility was doing its own review of the complaints over the Green Power program and that he was personally “taking this to heart.” He said the agency is developing standards for expanding renewable energy sources, but with an eye to fiscal moderation.

Padilla countered that he understood Wiggs’ perspective. But he said that the job of elected officials “is to push the envelope.”

“We aren’t putting our money where our mouth is on green power,” Padilla said.

Under a new state law passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gray Davis this fall, the state’s private utilities are required to boost their renewable energy supplies to 20% of their overall portfolio by 2017. But the DWP and other municipal utilities lobbied behind the scenes to be exempted from the new law. Sen. Byron Sher (D-Stanford) wrote the energy requirement.

Though it is not required to meet the new state standards, DWP could easily increase its wind, solar and geothermal power sources to 20% of its overall supplies by 2012, the consumer group argued.

Such a move would not only lower pollution, said Eli Richlin of the California research group, but it would also help the city avoid the volatile price spikes that California experienced during last year’s energy crisis. Renewable power is considered less susceptible to cost fluctuations than electricity made from natural gas.

“Los Angeles has a choice: We can continue to use dirty energy that is unreliable, or we can use more renewable energy,” Richlin said.

Wiggs told the council committee that the DWP will try to move as close as possible to the state’s new 20% renewable energy standard for private utilities. But he did not commit to any timeline, saying the agency would try to do so at a reasonable pace.