By Rachel Brahinsky

The fight over what sort of public power initiative should be placed before voters this fall is about to go public, as a Board of Supervisors committee prepares for a July 5 hearing on how to take control of the city's electricity service.

So far the debate on a new measure introduced by Sups. Tom Ammiano and Sophie Maxwell has taken place in closed-door meetings and a handful of community forums. The upcoming hearing will be the first chance the supervisors have to publicly air their policy differences on the measure.

They will do so under heavy scrutiny from public power advocates, who voiced their distaste for the proposal at a community meeting June 26. Two key provisions of the measure are at issue.

The current version would create an agency run by an appointed board, with only limited ability to acquire Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s San Francisco distribution system. Sup. Matt Gonzalez, who says he won't support the current measure, last week offered to amend the measure and presented his plan to the community group San Franciscans for Public Power.

In a nonbinding vote, SFPP members expressed strong support for his idea, which would create a power agency managed by an 11-member, district-elected board. The board would be empowered to finance a takeover of utility assets.

A third contentious issue, likely to emerge at the hearing, is how to proceed with closing PG&E's Hunter's Point power plant. Environmental justice advocates have demanded for years that the polluting plant be closed immediately. But the current public power measure sets a deadline of 2005 for closing the plant. For some, that's not soon enough.

Marie Harrison, a community organizer with Greenaction and a columnist for the San Francisco Bay View, told us some advocates may oppose the measure unless it's rewritten. "For me, and most of the environmentalists that I work with, this is going to be a very definitive issue," Harrison said. "We have been working far too long [to close the plant]. In 1998 we were told it would close by the year 2000. In 2000 we were being told 2004, then 2005. By 2005 it's going to be 2012. We're tired of making concessions."

Maxwell, whose office facilitated the drafting of environmental justice language in the measure, said it isn't realistic to demand an early closure – because the state agency in charge of the decision requires that the city come up with alternative power sources before replacing the plant. "If they don't know that, we've tried to explain many times," Maxwell said. "We certainly can't put in something that we know we can't do. It's a reliability issue. We have to have a reliable power source, and until we do that, we can't close the plant." She said she didn't know why 2005 was chosen as the target date. But under Clean Air Act regulations, that's the year the plant would have to be retrofitted if it's to stay open longer.

Harrison, who ran against Maxwell for the board in 2000, said the plant could be closed immediately. "It should happen now," she said. "I believe that if they implement the community energy plan, especially starting now with power shifting [where big power users are asked to shut down when blackouts are threatened] and educating the public about energy conservation, it can be done. They should start putting solar panels on public housing [to comply with the state's reliability requirements]."