Measure A Would Increase City Revenues While Eliminating Power Plant Impacts

In 2008, the city of Carlsbad commissioned a study looking at potential city revenues from their power plant site. The site has a current power plant and the power plant operator wanted to add another new plant to the site. Carlsbad studied a variety of scenarios that ranged from all power generation; to mixes of power generation, commercial, hotel and park uses; mixes of commercial, hotel, and park uses without any power generation, and a new power plant plus a desalination plant.

The scenarios with no power plant and all commercial/hotel/park uses outperformed all scenarios that included a power plant. This study shows that Measure A zoning is better for Redondo Beach revenues than the alternative of building the new plant and allowing AES to add commercial development to the rest of the site. Measure A provides more revenue for the city while eliminating the negative environmental, health and financial impacts of the power plant on the surrounding neighborhoods and businesses.

Extrapolating the results of this study for Measure A, results in projected City of Redondo revenues of about $8.5 million per year. Current city revenues from AES are under $400,000 per year. On top of that, City studies show the power plant decreases business revenue and property value growth, decreasing city revenues from property, hotel and business sales taxes and placing the success of our new $100+ million harbor revitalization at risk. A new power plant is bad for city revenues.

Even with San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station offline during our worst heatwaves in years, AES Redondo Beach only ran at a paltry 6.18 percent of capacity through the first nine months of 2012. CAISO studies and testimony to the City Council demonstrate that we don’t need power from a power plant in Redondo. 

Now AES’ application shows that particulate pollution will increase from the 3.3 tons per year AES reports on the current plant to a projected 17.1 tons at AES’ lowest projected run rate. Their new cleaner plant will pollute more because it will run more.

We don’t need the power. AES and City studies show the significant negative environmental and financial impacts of the power plant. And now the Carlsbad study provides solid evidence that Measure A zoning would result in substantial increases in city revenue from its commercial/hotel development alone without even considering the increased tax revenue from increases in surrounding property values and harbor area business revenues.  

The building evidence paints a very clear and compelling picture. Do we vote for reduced city and business revenues, decreased property values, increased pollution, and 50 years of blighting impacts; OR, increased city and business revenues, increased property values, decreased pollution, and elimination of harbor area blighting influence? 

Voting Yes on Measure A is a no-brainer.

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