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Retrospective: Lessons from the Morro Bay Power Plant Saga(See Morro Bay Power Plant: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) by Jack McCurdyThe rise and fall of the venture to build a new Morro Bay Power Plant is a case study in politics - how pure politics overwhelmed the truth. The facts, as described in the three-part series on the history of that venture, make that clear. It may be the first time that such a proposed government-regulated development has been dissected as it has, thanks in large part to the extensive record of what went on for almost five years. To reiterate, the California Energy Commission's (CEC) review of Duke Energy's application to build a new plant - to "modernize" the existing 50-plus-years-old plant, in the words of Duke and its followers - is almost certainly the longest in the Commission's history. And it sets a new record every day because the Commission never closed the books on the review and made its final decision approving a new plant (as was explored in part three). So in that sense, this project is unique because technically it is still alive, going on 10 years. The state sued Duke for manipulating the energy market, and Duke was forced to settle by paying $207,500 million. The staff of a public agency, the CEC, exposed the severe and destructive hazards that would come with the new plant designed by Duke. A group of Morro Bay residents tracked the project every step of the way in doing their best to inform the community about what was at stake - and to support the CEC staff's superb investigative work and to offer valuable suggestions of questions to raise. All that was public action in motion. What is so troubling is that politics prevailed over the facts in the CEC's decision to license a new Duke plant. One CEC staff member, when asked how the several presiding members who reviewed the application for almost four years could support Duke in the face of the evidence showing the monumental risk to the lives of residents from air pollution and to the Morro Bay National Estuary's aquatic life, said, "they are political animals." All the Commission members were political animals ultimately because the final vote to approve Duke's application was unanimous. At that final meeting in 2004 when the CEC cast a unanimous vote in Sacramento, it came as a surprise that the CEC staff was very reserved in its public testimony about what the CEC was about to approve - in contrast with staff members' blunt and uncompromising arguments in the record against approval of the project. Afterward, a staff member seemed to explain why staff criticism of the approval was so muted by saying, "We may have to defend them in court." This goes back to the point made in part three of the series that the CEC did not finalize its decision (called "docketing") because it may have feared being sued by the Coastal Alliance on Plant Expansion (CAPE) and/or others. Not because of its track record with legal challenges - which is reportedly perfect due in large part to the way state law is written to impede success of such suits - but because the Morro Bay decision may have been - and probably was - the worst in its history, based on the record and the law. So by not docketing the decision, the CEC set up the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board as the certain defendant in any litigation - if the water board also approved the new plant (and assuming that decision was upheld by the State Water Resources Control Board, the regional board's parent body). Unlike the CEC, the regional water board is very vulnerable to such litigation - with no state law to protect it. In fact, the board was sued by Voices of the Wetlands, a citizens group in the Moss Landing area, over its approval of big new power generation units at Duke's Moss Landing power plant in 2001. That case is now before the California Supreme Court with a decision expected this spring. The issue is the same: whether new federal court decisions prevent plants from drawing water out of estuaries, bays, or the ocean (called once-through cooling), killing the aquatic life in that water. The alternative is closed-cycle cooling, the most advanced engineering for cooling power plants that uses no sea water from any source. It is considered the "best technology available," which courts now require. And it is used elsewhere in California and throughout the nation and world. All the evidence shows that the CEC members who approved Duke's proposed new Morro Bay power plant were corrupt. Not that its members were taking bribes - there was no evidence of that or even any suspicion. That is the way that corrupt is commonly thought of. However, the first dictionary definition of corruption - and the one that fits here - is to be "changed from a sound condition to an unsound one," or "deteriorated from the normal." Corruption in this case has to do with deviation from the agency's statutory responsibility to act in the best interests of the public based on the facts and the law. It failed in that regard, as its own staff showed without actually accusing it of any such acts. The evidence presented by the CEC staff, CAPE and its experts and attorneys, and other parties made it seem very likely that had that plant been built, it would have destroyed Morro Bay - ruined this community. The emissions would have made Morro Bay a very undesirable place to live. As scientific evidence placed in the record by CAPE and CEC staff showed, no safe level of the particulate matter in the emissions from the plant's smokestacks (Environmental Protection Agency / Particle Pollution Facts) could have been reached because no safe amount of particulate matter exists. People - residents and visitors alike - are steadily becoming more conscious of health risks (air, food, chemicals, ignorance, etc.) and would have for certain become aware of what exposure to the emissions from the new plant would mean to them, especially to children and the elderly. An investigation by Monique Nelson, a charter member of CAPE's board, found that a power plant has a detrimental impact on tourism in Morro Bay, based on her review of several tourist books that cited the negatives of this plant and how it mars the appeal of visiting the town. These are prospective tourists being told by tourism experts to beware. The projected use of more water by a new plant and the killing of more aquatic life would threaten the estuary. An Environmental Protection Agency report said that when the aquatic population of an estuary "is reduced beyond a critical threshold," such a decline has been a "factor in some recent fisheries collapses." It happened about four years ago to Mount Hope Bay in Massachusetts where "both scientists and fishermen have documented the collapse of multiple fish species due to the impacts of once-through cooling by a power plant there," according to the Boston Globe. Another “once-teeming fishing ground on the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border...is now a dead zone for many species," the newspaper reported. Both collapses were documented by EPA studies and reports. If it happened here - and it still could as long as the existing plant continues to operate after a half century of degradation to the Estuary - it would no doubt be devastating to all segments of the community. All these increased environmental hazards to air and water could become even greater threats to tourism, businesses, and property values - to the extent any one can imagine. A scientific report based on 49 research studies ("Undesirable facilities and property values: a summary of empirical studies," Stephen Farber, Ecological Economics, 24, 1998) showed that "the location of undesirable land uses, such as waste sites, hazardous manufacturing facilities, or electric utility plants, have adverse effects on residential property values in surrounding communities or neighborhoods." One study "found that health risk beliefs did affect property values. These result from 'economic risks' stemming from "health and amenity risks associated with environmental hazards, whether real or perceived." Findings of "adverse economic impacts of undersirable land uses could provide a substantive basis for concerns of environmental" consequences, producing "attitudes (that) are frequently translated into reduced likelihoods of economic activities, such as vacationing . . ." In terms of property values, the research showed, "each mile that the property is closer to an undesirable amenity, the lower the market value of the site; hence, each mile of proximity has a negative price and each mile further distant has a positive price." It would seem highly likely that concerns about all kinds of health and economic risks have risen in recent years and will continue to rise because of the increase in scientific knowledge about those risks, as witness the significant revelations about the dangers of particular matter in industrial emissions that occurred just during the five-year regulatory review of the proposed Morro Bay power plant replacement. The CEC overruled the California Coastal Commission's disapproval of use of once-through cooling by the proposed new Morro Bay power plant as part of their review process. But, under separate state law, as CAPE attorney Bonnie Churney pointed out in one of her briefs in 2002 - which has been overlooked by nearly everyone, the Coastal Commission would have had to approve changes to the Coastal Land Use Plan (CLUP) for Morro Bay, which the city and the Commission administer. For one thing, the proposed new plant would have had a larger "footprint" (occupied more acreage that the existing one) and, as Churney noted, "an amendment to the CLUP is required for an expansion of existing industrial or energy-related activities and facilities within the Coastal Zone." For another, as the CLUP states, "the City shall insist that the present operation and any further expansion of the [Morro Bay] Plant conform to the standards of federal and state pollution control requirements, and emission levels be maintained." The CEC evidentiary record shows those emission levels would have increased, Churney argued. The Coastal Commission would have had to approve both exceptions to the CLUP in order for the plant to be built, and it seems highly unlikely that it would, given its long record of protecting the environment and people. One other pitfall that stood in Duke's way - and still does - is the conclusion in the Final (CEC) Staff Assessment of the proposed project that, if a new plant was not authorized to use seawater for cooling, there are viable and more desirable alternatives to the Morro Bay site for the proposed plant, Four of those sites are in Fresno and Kings counties near electricity transmission lines, where there would be less environmental and visual impacts, the staff report said. In its application to the CEC for a license to replace the existing plant, Duke had argued that "the power plant is a 'coastal dependent' facility because it relies on seawater for cooling." However, had the Commission found that closed-cycle cooling, which does not rely on estuary, bay, or ocean water for cooling, was the best cooling method, as the staff recommended, then logically there would have been no rationale for building a larger, more polluting plant in Morro Bay. The same holds true if the Coastal Commission would even now support a closed-cycle cooling plant. Or if the City of Morro Bay, which has consistently opposed closed-cycle cooling, changed its mind and endorsed closed-cycle cooling in order avoid losing the chance at a new plant - and millions of dollars of revenue. If any of that happened, coastal dependency would disappear because use of estuary water would no longer be needed to cool the plant. And so might any chance of a new plant ever being built it Morro Bay. Some may ask: how could the city have supported the new plant proposed by Duke in light of the facts about its impacts on public health and the estuary? Former mayor Rodger Anderson, who was among the strong Duke advocates on the City Council, seemed to reflect their thinking at the final CEC hearing in Morro Bay on the proposed decision endorsing the plant as Duke proposed it. "The power plant isn't the problem as far as the estuary," he said. "In spite of what many people testify as to the drastic degradation of the health of the estuary," it still looks healthy with all its wildlife. But its "health . . .can be enhanced . . .through environmental mitigation" with Duke's money, which will stop the sedimentation filling up the estuary, he said. What people want is a "smaller plant" and "one that is more efficient." And, he implied, that is what the proposed new plant will give them. He made no mention of emissions, health risks, killing of aquatic life through diversion of water into the plant, all the evidence in the record about the predicted impacts, the refutation of Duke's arguments that the plant would be a "cleaner and smaller" plant, use less water from the estuary, and reduce emissions. None of the council members, except for Colby Crotzer and Betty Winholtz as lone voices, did along the way. It may well have been that those council supporters of the new Duke plant never read the record. How would they otherwise be aware of the scope and depth of the information? It certainly wasn't in the local media. Did city staff inform them? Or should it have, if it didn't? These are questions that will probably never be answered. It is clear that the council either did not know or knew and chose not to talk about it, for whatever reason. The primary lesson from this experience with the power plant - which is still going on, with decisions still to be made about its future that are crucially important to the well-being and livability of Morro Bay - is that agencies of government can be less than honest, despite what many tend to believe. Citizens can't blindly trust their elected or appointed representatives to protect them from harm. They must take it upon themselves to become informed about anything affecting their communities and act as necessary to make certain that they protect themselves. With the future of the plant site still undecided, residents will have to seize the opportunity and speak out with a voice that makes sure that 107-acre piece of paradise is not turned into something almost as bad as the new power plant that never was. It ain't over yet.
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