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Politics & Government

LADWP Finance Meeting Turns Into Debate on Coal Dependence

The open meeting at City Hall on Saturday morning is held to discuss the LADWP's finances and potential rate hikes, but residents and environmental activists are more concerned with finding ways to move the city away from coal-burning plants.

The first-ever joint meeting of the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners and the City Council Energy and Environment Committee was supposed to focus on the LADWP's finances but that topic got sidelined when a capacity crowd of environmental activists and residents showed up at the meeting Saturday to protest the use of coal-burning power plants in Arizona and Utah.

"We made a commitment to a much more transparent process," LADWP Board President Thomas S. Sayles told the crowd that filled the City Council Chambers at Los Angeles City Hall.

However, attendees weren’t interested in discussing finances or potential rate hikes, a point made clear at a small rally organized by the Los Angeles chapter of Greenpeace that took place before the meeting. About 60 people participated in the rally outside City Hall, carrying signs that read "Dump Coal" and "End Coal."

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Inside City Hall, City Councilwoman Jan Perry, chairwoman of the Energy and Environment Committee, conducted the meeting, which began with a 30-minute presentation by LADWP General Manager Ron Nichols.

Nichols, who has been on the job since January, talked about the challenges facing the department, including the lack of sufficient incoming revenue as well as aging infrastructure, much of it at least 100 years old. He said that the department's services have become more reliable, with fewer power and water failures, but that there was much more work to be done.

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Attendees applauded when Nichols announced that the LADWP's three local gas-fired power plants that are cooled with seawater would be converted to dry-cooling systems, although he did not provide any indication of when that would happen. It was also a topic addressed later in the public comment section when several people said seawater cooling causes significant damage to marine life.

During the extended public comment period, more than 50 people took turns speaking, almost exclusively criticizing the LADWP's plan to take until 2030 to stop using power generated by the out-of-state plants. Due to the large number of people wishing to address the meeting, each speaker was given just one minute to voice his or her concerns.

Among the speakers was Dario, a 10-year-old boy who received huge applause for his passionate statement on moving away from coal dependence. He came to the meeting with Chrissy Scarborough-Cutting, a lead organizer in the Sierra Club LA Beyond Coal movement, who also spoke at the meeting. Click on the video link to the right to see Dario's speech.

Teacher, activist and former 36th Congressional District candidate Marcy Winograd, who is also the co-chair of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles also attended the meeting.

"The question of whether the city of Los Angeles gets off coal by 2020 is a matter of political will -- how much we want to see this happen and to what extent we are willing to work to make it happen," she said, adding,  "The city has a multitude of opportunities to use small learning communities already in place at local high schools to focus on making this city green and sustainable."

Several prominent Mar Vista community members attended the meeting including Mar Vista Patch's green columnist and Mar Vista Community Council Green Committee Vice Chair Jeanne Kuntz; Joseph and Barbara Treves; Christopher McKinnon; Open Mar Vista's James Brennan; Mar Vista Patch blogger Andy Shrader; artist Marina DeBris; and MVCC Green Committee Chair Sherri Akers. 

During the public comment section, DeBris took the council to task for bringing plastic water bottles and single use cups to an environmental meeting.

Akers also spoke during the public comment section and not only asked the LADWP board and City Council committee to replace the plants' coal-generated power by 2020, but also to use the neighborhood councils to help achieve that goal. 

"What I was trying to convey to them is that the community council network is an untapped gold mine in terms of doing education and outreach on environmental initiatives," Akers told Mar Vista Patch after the meeting. 

Akers said the process is a two-way street because the community councils can be used by civic leaders to get their messages across. Conversely, she said, as the community demands change, there are 90 local councils that can reach out to city leaders to advocate change. She cited how 14 community councils have already sent letters to the LA City Council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa demanding Los Angeles be weaned off coal by 2020. 

Akers said she believes a coal-free Los Angeles is possible by 2020, but the city and the LADWP "have underestimated what can be done through efficiency and conservation."

She cited a $45,000 grant from the LADWP given to the 11th District by Councilman Bill Rosendahl to set up .

"As a result [of those workshops ] we saw in Mar Vista that our community conservation was ratcheted up, our Green Committee suddenly had more volunteers and our awareness resulted in lower consumption of electricity and water,"  she said.

Other speakers at Saturday's meeting suggested that the LADWP take advantage of the area's sunny climate and the many available roofs to install more solar panels. Wind power was also a popular request.

Perry ended the meeting reminding attendees that the process of reviewing the LADWP's financial future had just begun, and urging them to participate in the several neighborhood meetings the department is holding in the coming weeks.

The West Los Angeles meeting will be held June 22 at 6:30 p.m. at Stephen S. Wise Temple, 15500 Stephen S. Wise Dr., Los Angeles, 90077.

A full copy of the LADWP's presentation at Saturday's meeting, as well as an outline of the department's 2011 proposed cuts can be seen in the PDF files to the right of this article.

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