Earth Equity News

Southern California Judge Rules New Plants Need More Environmental Analysis. By Margo Roosevelt, LATimes, July 31, 2008. "[Southern California's] long-term plans to generate electricity to serve a growing population and to replace [out-dated] dirty plants were thrown into disarray [Tuesday], when a LA County Superior Court judge ruled... that local authorities had failed to do the necessary environmental and health analyses... The proposed [gas-fired] plants, which include 11 in the Los Angeles Basin and two in the outlying areas of Desert Hot Springs and Victorville, would be built by private companies, which would sell the power to Southern California Edison and other utilities. But under the federal Clean Air Act, no polluting facilities can be built unless [emissions] are reduced elsewhere in the region through... offsets. Years ago, the air district set aside what it called Priority Reserve credits so that projects such as hospitals and police stations could be built even if they added to the region's pollution. Last year, the district, lobbied by a host of former politicians, decided to sell the credits to energy companies for $420 million -- about half the market value -- according to environmentalists' calculations. Environmental and community groups said Wednesday that they would sue in federal court to nullify such credits. The decision, meanwhile, left air regulators perplexed at their next move... Barry Wallerstein, the air district's executive officer... said the region needs about 2,000 megawatts of new capacity, and that sufficient offsets are unavailable on the open market. [The LA County Superior Court's]... decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Communities for a Better Environment and other groups. In it, Judge Ann I. Jones told the air district it could not sell offsets to the plants without a fuller analysis under California's Environmental Quality Act. In particular, the judge said, the district needed to analyze exactly how many tons of pollutants, including... greenhouse gases... each proposed plant would emit."