Posted on 12/21/2010 10:31:33 AM PST by wac3rd
San Francisco's last fossil fuel power plant will start the new year by shutting down. The Potrero Hill plant, one of the dirtiest in California, will cease operations on Jan. 1, state officials are expected to announce today.
The plant, operated by Houston-based GenOn Energy Inc., formerly Mirant Corp., could be fired up in the event of a dramatic power emergency before being decommissioned permanently on Feb. 28, officials said.
"Cross your fingers," said Yakout Mansour, president of the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state power grid. "It would have to be something very significant for us to need the plant."
The impending closure comes after bruising political infighting at City Hall and is a clear victory for residents of the oft-neglected southeast corner of the city. Many residents there suffer from disproportionately high rates of cancer, asthma and other health problems. Some have fought for more than a decade to shut down the plant, which sits between the waterfront and a residential neighborhood. It burned diesel and natural gas.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Your not going to have a very sustainable future if you keep shutting down power plants with out building new ones.
The future I see for you is cold and dark in the winter and hot and dry in the summer. (Yeh I know SF is cold in the summer.)
It's traditionally a heavy industry area. I grew up in SF on Bernal Heights, a hill near Potrero Hill. On top of my hill, I could see all the smokestacks churning out smoke from the industrial area to the east. One seemed to be the powerplant, which sometimes was belching flames perhaps to burn off gases. Not only were there industrial plants forging metals and plating stuff, there were the shipyards that heavily polluted the soil and air. Me and my friends used to wander through the area, seeing the insides of slaughter-houses and factories for fun. A lot of the industry disappeared from SF over the last 50 years and went elsewhere.
When I think of Potrero Hill, I just worry about the Anchor Stream Brewery and hope it is still functioning efficiently and safely!
The 2nd "dirtiest" power plant will soon take up the number one spot, they'll target it next.
I’m finally reading Atlas Shrugged after all these years. It is prophetic for real.
With the enviros scurring around like rabid rats to close down the power plants in N Californicator land, I like to ask them how will we be able to recharge the new electric cars like the Dolt er Volt?
Their response is Solar power, and I just laugh because those car batteries will require a lot of power to be recharged.
Silly rabid rabbits
Anchor is one of the newer ones. There used to be many breweries in SF, most of them left by the 70s. Then a few new trendy ones started up in the 80s. As a kid, I used to look out my window from our view high on Bernal Heights, and just stare at all the neon lights throughout the city. It was a beautiful sight, dozens of large lit moving advertisements on factory roofs. The city banned most of these displays by the 70s.
Most prominent were the brewery signs. Hamms had a huge lit-up beer mug, looked like 35 feet to me. It would slowly fill up, have bubbles rise and then have a head of foam. Sigh, the liberals moved into the city in the late 60s and banned all the commercial neon displays.
I don't know if any farms are still active, but I still see large greenhouses by McLaren Park (moved out of SF in the 70s down the peninsula, more normal there).
Except that Rome went from Pagan to Christian. We’re being driven from Christian to Pagan, instead!!!
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