False front
PG&E-sponsored group claims to champion plant closure, but targeted Bayview-Hunters Point residents aren't hearing the whole story

By Matthew Hirsch

In a sneaky move to co-opt some in the Bayview-Hunters Point community and confuse the rest, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. launched a publicity campaign to overcome local resistance to a key transmission project on the peninsula and maintain its monopoly over San Francisco's electricity distribution.

PG&E blitzed Bayview-Hunters Point residents with letters and a full-page newspaper advertisement in the Independent inviting them to sign up for its Close It! Coalition to help shut down the company's Hunters Point power plant. The campaign materials imply that if residents join Close It!, the utility will have a stronger case to convince state regulators that building a 27-mile long transmission line between Jefferson and Martin in northern San Mateo County can improve San Francisco electricity reliability, thereby facilitating the closure of the Hunters Point plant. The letters and the ad were signed by PG&E vice president for environmental affairs Bob Harris.

"It's terribly deceptive," Ed Smeloff, San Francisco's chief power policy expert, told the Bay Guardian. "If they really think that is the case [that the Jefferson-Martin transmission line can ensure long-term reliability], they should seek approval from the proper regulatory authority."

Smeloff said PG&E is taking its case to Bayview-Hunters Point residents instead of to the California Independent System Operator to rally much-needed support for its transmission projects and to galvanize opposition to the city's own plans to site four natural gas-fired electric generators. Then, if PG&E runs into delays and fails to complete its transmission upgrades or get ISO approval by 2005, it can keep the Hunters Point power plant open for years to come and lay blame on the state regulatory bureaucracy. PG&E did not return repeated phone calls from the Bay Guardian.

Marie Harrison, a community organizer with Greenaction, said PG&E is simply trying to manufacture support in Bayview-Hunters Point, whose residents have targeted the company and its power plant for various protests and lawsuits claiming environmental injustice. "I think they are going through the back door to get to the community, [but] we are not going to be tin soldiers for PG&E. They still owe us a lot."

Publicity for the Close It! Coalition emphasizes in broad, imprecise terms how PG&E shares the popular goal of shutting down the Hunters Point power plant, but it omits several key facts. The company doesn't mention, for example, that it hasn't asked the ISO to approve the Jefferson-Martin line as a suitable replacement for Hunters Point. PG&E also doesn't say that Burlingame and San Francisco residents have raised stiff opposition to the project, because of the health implications and decreasing property values that would accompany the electricity transmission lines.

Some guidelines the ISO has already approved for shutting down the Hunters Point plant include siting the San Francisco-owned combustion turbine engines and doing minor transmission upgrades on PG&E's lines, but not constructing the Jefferson-Martin line. If San Francisco's plan is to work, city officials will have to quickly select the best property for its generators and arrive at an agreement with community groups that would be affected before the Dec. 31 deadline. Naturally, PG&E prefers an alternative to the combustion turbines, because any new city-owned electricity generation could be a giant step toward public power.

Given the choice between PG&E's transmission upgrades and San Francisco's combustion turbines, several parties are still looking for a third option – or at least a comprehensive planning process to explore the full range of alternatives for shutting down the Hunters Point plant.

Local Power director Paul Fenn said San Francisco's plan to purchase electricity at wholesale rates for its citizens, known as community-choice aggregation, might reduce the city's need for all four combustion turbines.

The San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission will hold a public hearing on the R.W. Beck final report on community-choice aggregation Fri/15, 10 a.m.-noon, City Hall, Room 250, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, S.F. (415)-554-7702.

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