Brightline Publishes Report on the Recent History and Current State of the Potrero Power Plant Debate

keep it open as soon as an underwater power cable plugs into the City in early 2010.







The plan to build new power plants quickly lost support at the Board of Supervisors, though a counter-proposal by Mayor Newsom to upgrade three smaller units remaining after the Potrero smokestack shuts down as permitted by the ISO was rejected in November. Moreover, recent newspaper articles suggest that the Mirant Corporation has designs to keep its Unit 3 smokestack in operation past the end of next year, subjecting the community to more pollution and the San Francisco Bay to more superheated water discharge.







Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who once supported the proposal to build new power plants, has recently introduced legislation that instead calls for a renewed effort to close the entire plant with only clean energy, energy efficiency, and demand-reduction measures. This proposal appears promising, says Arce, and suggests that “the power plant debate may have come full circle.”