San Francisco Bay Guardian

October 24th, 2001

For more information, contact:

Sue Chiang Greenaction

(415) 248-5010

PG&E's toxic toll: The Bayview-Hunters Point power plant is killing people. Now's the time to shut it down

By Rachel Brahinsky

ONE NIGHT LAST week the sounds from Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s power plant were so loud and disturbing that Lynne Brown felt compelled to call 911 for help. Brown, 47, lives down the street from the power plant, on Harbor Road in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point. "We live over here. We hear the noise from the generators," Brown told the Bay Guardian. "The thing is so old I'm really afraid."

The sounds last week, he said, were probably just construction PG&E is doing at the plant. But Brown has reason to be on edge. His home isn't far from the city's other power plant, up on Potrero Hill, along with two freeways packed with car traffic and hundreds of other sources of toxins, including several federal Superfund sites. Brown's home is in the center of what some call the "toxic triangle": PG&E's power plant, a decaying, radioactive shipyard that once was used for U.S. Navy research on nuclear weapons, and the only sewage treatment center in the city.

"Every time the fire department comes down here, everyone turns to see: is it going to the shipyard or to PG&E?" Brown said. "It's scary."

Brown points out that the Bayview, which historically has been predominantly home to African American and low-income San Franciscans, gets hit twice by PG&E: once with pollution when the power is generated and again with the rising power bills that have resulted from electricity deregulation. Both leave the community feeling a lack of control.

Dozens of families have stories of members succumbing to diseases tied to pollution. Residents of the Bayview, which lacks sufficient health care facilities, have unusually high rates of illnesses such as heart disease, asthma (especially among children), breast cancer, and strokes, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. All of those maladies are influenced by environmental factors.

"I live right here within 200 yards of the stacks, and I don't know when I will get sick," Brown told us. "It's just a matter of time before you do get it."

For years neighborhood residents have demanded that the city shut down PG&E's plant and stop the expansion of the Potrero Hill power plant, which PG&E sold to Mirant Corp. in 1999. But it will take more than community pressure to stem the pollution. Though a deal was struck in 1998 to close the PG&E plant, the state has demanded that it remain open indefinitely. And in a sign that PG&E is hoping to milk the plant for every last kilowatt before it is put to rest, the utility is seeking a deal with the local air quality management board that could extend the plant's life by several
years.

Mirant is pushing hard for approval of the Potrero plant expansion, which would bring the company's generating capacity to a stunning 900 megawatts of power -- more than the entire city uses at peak times.

To fight pollution and high rates ñ and to bring energy under local control ñ community members are asking the city to vote for the four energy-related initiatives on the Nov. 6 ballot. Proposition F (the water and power authority) and Measure I (the municipal utility district, or MUD, initiative) will create public power agencies, and Propositions B and H will initiate massive new investment in solar power ñ more than any other city in the world. The four measures together would put San Francisco at the forefront of the statewide movement for local control and clean power.

"PG&E would like to say that they are not the culprit," said Marie Harrison, a community organizer and columnist for the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, which has covered the plants' health impacts for years. "For the past 50 or 60 years they have been a major contributor to pollution in the community. They have known this. So this is a call for not only shutting down an old, antiquated power plant but also for public power, putting the
power in the hands of people. We should have never surrendered our control."

An ailing community

Health problems in the Bayview are among the most severe in the state. A 1997 UC San Francisco study showed that hospitalizations for chronic illnesses including asthma, heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, and emphysema were four times more common in the Bayview than statewide.

Children are the most vulnerable, particularly to asthma. Asthma rates are highest in low-income urban communities, and researchers have documented a sharp increase in the past few decades. In the Bayview high rates of asthma or asthmalike symptoms have the community on constant alert. A 1999 study by the San Francisco Unified School District and Bayview community groups found that of 2,150 schoolchildren in the neighborhood, 17 percent said they suffered from asthma. Another 19 percent of the children reported similar symptoms but hadn't been diagnosed with asthma (see "Gasping for Air," 4/21/99).

"We know there's inordinate incidences of it, since the national norm for asthma is about 7 percent," Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai, an emergency physician and a Bayview community advocate, told us. "We have six schools in the area in proximity to the power plants where kids have very high rates of allergies and reactive airways diseases, including asthma and bronchiolitis."

So what's the cause of all this sickness? According to Cynthia Selmar, director of African American health for the city, it's hard to pin health problems to a single source. Selmar says that the links between the high rate of illness and pollution in the Bayview haven't yet been fully documented, but that environmental pollution is clearly tied to at least some of the community's health woes.

Sumchai agrees. "The power plants are astonishingly dangerous emitters of toxic substances into the air," she said. "They have extraordinary impact, not only on causing diseases like respiratory illness, heart attacks, and cancer but also on neurological disorders and psychological well-being."

Dirt and disease

The energy-generation industry ranks as one of the nation's dirtiest. Coal-fired plants are by far the worst air polluters, but natural gas plants such as Hunters Point and Potrero are also culpable. They are the two largest stationary sources of air pollution in the city.

The San Francisco plants emit several pollutants, including dust and soot particles and nitrogen oxide, a chemical that has been tied to respiratory illness, smog, and acid rain.

Mirant's power plant already pumps out 680 tons of such emissions annually, according to an assessment by Communities for a Better Environment, an advocacy group that supports all four of the San Francisco energy initiatives. If the plant is expanded, CBE estimates, it will produce another 288 tons of emissions.

The plants pose particular challenges because they're so old. The Hunters Point plant, which was built in 1929, emits 340 tons of nitrogen oxide and 37 tons of particulate matter every year, regularly spews ozone, and periodically spills oil, asbestos, and other hazardous materials. In 1998 the plant's site contained more hazardous materials than any other facility monitored by the city's health department (see "Poison Power," 1/28/98).

The ties between particulates and health problems are well documented. The American Lung Association cites more than 500 scientific studies that, according to an ALA press release, "confirm the relationship between particulate air pollution, illness, hospitalization, and premature death."

As particulates increase, CBE staffers write in a document opposing the Potrero power plant expansion, "severe health impacts increase, including higher death rates, hospital visits, chronic bronchitis, increased heart attacks, etc." The plants also release carbon monoxide, organic compounds that create smog, and sulfur compounds, which can also trigger respiratory
problems.

Mirant, however, vows to pursue the expansion. Spokesperson Patrick Dorinson told us the corporation "operate[s] our plants as environmentally sensitively as possible. The new plant at Potrero will be state-of-the-art technology for San Francisco and also a much cleaner form of power than the older power plants in California."

PG&E press representative Ron Low did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The solution: community control

This isn't the first time community members have pushed to eliminate environmental problems by taking control of the power plants. In 1998, when residents rallied to close PG&E's Hunters Point plant, many suggested that outright ownership would lead to environmentally responsible management.

Alan Ramo, who heads the Golden Gate University Environmental Law and Justice Clinic, supported taking over the plants at the time. "When sizing or developing a new retrofit or repowering project, a city might be more oriented toward sizing it for reliability as opposed to sizing it for maximized profits," Ramo told us. "It would be easier for a city to make that balance, whereas a private company is responsive to its shareholders. A city might be more oriented toward phasing [a plant] out, even if it could make more money."

But instead of taking control of the plants, Mayor Willie Brown brokered a deal with PG&E: the company would close the Hunters Point plant when it was no longer needed, while the city would not intervene in the sale of the Potrero plant. The state now says Hunters Point must stay open indefinitely. (Also, if Mirant is allowed to expand to 900 megawatts ñ thus dominating the city's energy market ñ experts say it will be far harder for the city to form a public power agency. Without a market, there would be nobody to sell power to.)

Activists have also been making the tie between dirty energy production and illness for some time. This year they've linked the issue to PG&E and the public power campaign. Earlier this month the Toxic Links Coalition focused its annual tour of cancer-causing industries on energy. The group marched from PG&E's downtown headquarters to the offices of Bechtel Corp. and Chevron Corp., and on to the office of Solem and Associates, a public relations firm that has worked for all three corporations. Solem and Associates runs the fake grassroots group heading up PG&E's anti-public power campaign this fall. Several groups are planning another such tour Nov. 2.

As the Nov. 6 election approaches, public power advocates are reminding voters what local control over energy can mean. The most dramatic example is the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, a public power agency whose customers voted to close a nuclear power plant in 1989. Had the plant been under private ownership, residents would have had few options for forcing a shutdown.

The opportunity to make the plant's managers accountable to customers is one of the driving forces behind the campaigns for the MUD and the other three energy measures. Almost every candidate for the MUD board of directors is campaigning to shut down the Hunters Point plant and replace it with cleaner energy sources.

"A large part of our community really has to carry the burden," public and solar power campaign director Ross Mirkarimi said. "This really is a form of domestic violence, and in order to break the cycle of violence, we have to step away from the current system. PG&E has been an irresponsible owner. PG&E was and remains a perpetrator. PG&E's culpability is never going to be exacted through the [state agencies that oversee the energy system]; it has to be through a local, independent body."

Learn about the public and solar power campaigns and meet candidates for the MUD board of directors at the Bayview-Hunters Point District Library, Wed/24, 6-8 p.m., 5075 Third St., S.F. (415) 621-2126. Join the march against toxins, organized by Greenaction, Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates, and others, Fri/2, 3 p.m., gather at PG&E headquarters, 77 Beale, S.F. (415) 982-8043 or (415) 248-5010.

E-mail Rachel Brahinsky at rachel@sfbg.com.