Plan to Exempt Power Plant from Environmental Review is Part of Budget Bills—Last Minute Amendment is a Real Stinker and Will Be Shoved into SB 1083 Without the Light of Day

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“Rather than conduct a complete analysis, the District fails to even disclose all of the relevant data in its possession. The District possesses, but did not release, "modeling data" regarding the health effects for two facilities other than the Vernon plant. (AR 6039). And, the one facility for which data was provided, Vernon, hints that the health effects of the program — taken cumulatively — would be monumental. Looking at that one facility only and using the most conservative estimates, the facility is predicted to cause 3.82 premature deaths a year. Assuming that the facility will operate over a period of thirty years, this one facility alone may result in 115 additional deaths. Despite these significant health effects, the District fails to release or analyze existing data or to obtain additional information necessary to evaluate the foil health consequence of this plan.

“Further, the District also fails to analyze meaningfully the cumulative health impacts of Rule 1315's introduction of millions of pounds of new pollution — pollution credits that are intended to be and will be 'converted into new emissions — into the Basin. There is no analysis performed of the health impacts of increased smog precursors, particularly for inland regions like Riverside where it accumulates. (AR 6063). The District also failed to analyze the collective health effects of increasing particulate matter in an area already exceeding state and federal health standards.”

"The failure of the PEA [Editor’s note: Program Environmental Assessment] to describe, evaluate, analyze, and consider the substantial health impacts of the program -- not just the serious impact caused by a single generating plant --and to discern whether claimed benefits will be sufficient to mitigate these impacts renders the PEA legally deficient."

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The PEA Fails to Examine Adequately the Aesthetic Impacts from the Project.

"Once again, the PEA suffers from the District's failure to consider the impact of increasing significantly the particulate and sulfuric emissions that are the foreseeable consequence of the program. And, to the extent that the PEA does analyze aesthetic impacts, the discussion is impermissibly disaggregated and limited to the speculative musings as to the aesthetic implications of as-yet undesigned and yet-to-be constructed power plants.

"The most obvious visual effect of allowing millions of pounds of new pollution to be introduced into the already polluted air of the Basin -- the further browning of the sky -- is completely unaddressed in the PEA. Rather, the District concludes — unbelievably — that these amendments will have "nc direct impact on a scenic vista . . . or substantially degrade the existing visual character or quality of the site and its surroundings." (AR 5981).

"The District's blissful conclusion is wholly unsupported by any substantial evidence in the record. Rather, it is based on the District's unsubstantiated claim that “it would be speculative to analyze any impact on aesthetics resulting from haze." How is it speculative to entertain the visual effect of adding millions of pounds of particulate matter and thousands of pounds of sulfur oxides to the already hazy sky? It is not at all speculative that there will be a loss of scenic vistas of mountain and sea that results from increasing the existing layer of haze and smog that rests over the Basin.

"The absence of any analysis of .the foreseeable aesthetic consequences in the form cf haze and smog as a direct result of capturing and making particulate credits available for entities wao will, inter alia, construct power plants and other smog-creating facilities, renders the PEA inadequate as a matter of law."

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The PEA Fails to Examine the Global Warming Effects of the Project.

"The District's PEA limited its discussion of the greenhouse gas/global warming consequences of the project to the increased generation of a single greenhouse gas -- carbon dioxide. The emission credits captured and tracked under the new Rule 1315 and their use to allow the construction of new electric generating facilities has a certain and foreseeable effect on global warming. Despite these known substantial environmental consequences, the PEA fails to identify fully these effects, fails to adequately analyze or quantify them and, as a result, fails to consider mitigation measures, in violation of CEQA."

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It is legally impermissible to ignore a known environmental effect based only upon the claim that those effects will be analyzed later when the utility using those credits submits an analysis. …

"It is undisputed that many of the greenhouse gas emissions that will be generated by the ultimate end-users of the Priority Reserve have not been discussed in the PEA. Without more, the failure to discuss these reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts of both the rules and the facilities that those rules expressly contemplate constitutes an abuse of discretion."

"The PEA's analyses of health impacts, aesthetic impacts and global warming/greenhouse gases are fundamentally flawed. The failure to adequately analyze these impacts renders the District's PEA inadequate under CEQA.”

Need we say more about this bill? The court has said this is going to look bad, smell bad, and that data is not being released. Why is the legislature considering going back against legislation passed by majorities on a bill that has nothing to do with the budget long after the August 31 deadline for passage of bills has come and gone? This one can’t stand the light of day.

CEQA is the basic environmental law of the state and was part of Republican demands made last year in the budget when Republican Senators held up approval of the budget in a failed attempt to strip Attorney General Jerry Brown of authority to enforce it in connection with implementation of AB 32, the landmark global warming greenhouse gas bill passed by the legislature in 2006.

Is this this year’s reward for Republican intransigence on the budget? Will Democrats who voted for these environmental laws in the past, vote for SB 1083—which needs a two-thirds vote (as do all bills passed after August 31)? What does that say?