AES continues to try to hoodwink the public into thinking that a new Redondo plant is critical to the grid of the future. Recently they have tried the scare tactic that San Onofre will be down, so they are even more critical. CEC power generation statistics, released this week, tell a much different story.
This year we have had several huge heatwaves complete with a few days of Flex Alert; and, San Onofre was offline the entire time. One would expect, given AES' propaganda, that AES Redondo would have had a power production heyday. Well, the CEC numbers show that by the end of September AES had produced a whopping.....drum roll please... 6.18 percent of their capacity. I am not kidding... a paltry 6.18 percent of capacity.
Next year two new power plants are coming online in City of Industry and El Segundo. Either of these new plants, on their own, could have easily picked up the entire AES load and still had 80 percent of their capacity plus a whole other power plant to spare.
Oh and to add insult to injury, according the CEC, the AES Redondo run numbers are artifically inflated. It turns out our old, outdated plant stays online when unneeded because of the time and cost of powering it up and down. AES Redondo produced power (and polluted our air) when not needed simply to avoid a restart.
Residents should cast a wary eye on the propaganda from AES, the chamberites, and AES' paid resident mouthpieces. AES will spend hundreds of thousands to try to fool residents into supporting them. They are running scared. Why else would they have changed their plans at the last minute—adding a facade around the plant and moving the whaling wall? They are trying to put "lipstick on the pig" in a desparate attempt to sway resident opinion in the upcoming Measure A vote. Do they think we are that stupid? Really?
Think about it. If AES REALLY cared about our community, why were these elements not part of their original proposal? I think the residents of Redondo are smarter than AES thinks. First AES thought we were dumb enough to believe the new plant would be hidden behind a few palm trees. They went to great lengths to find the few perspectives where the trees lined up just right to mask the new plant. They had to go out on the ocean and deep into the harbor to find these views.
But residents didn't buy it. And, I think most will see through this latest deception as well. There is no way to hide an 80 foot tall power plant with three 140 foot smoke stacks on their small property. And there is no way to make a power plant pretty.
The bottom line is the evidence shows we don't need a new power plant. But AES will do anything to try to convince us otherwise. Don't buy it. Give generations to come a legacy of cleaner air and a waterfront free of blight. Let's give the new Shade Hotel and CenterCal's redevelopment of our waterfront the best chance of success. Rid our waterfront of this blighting, polluting behemoth forever.
This March we will have the chance to vote to phase out the power plant. Vote for a legacy we can all be proud of. Vote to revitalize our waterfront. Vote for cleaner air for our kids.
Vote YES on Measure A.
