Panel Urges Municipal Power at Town Hall Meeting

By Paul Kozakiewicz

The continuing power crisis in the state brought out a diverse crowd to address members of the public at a Town Hall Meeting held June 23 at the Richmond Community Center.

Hosted by Richmond District Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, the panel included Bay Guardian publisher Bruce Brugmann, former supervisor Angela Alioto and SF Public Utilities Commission general manager Ed Smeloff.

The meeting provided a platform for Brugmann, Alioto and Smeloff to extol the virtues of creating a Municipal Utility District, which could be on the ballot in November, 2001 or early 2002. Because of rolling blackouts and the bankruptcy of PG&E, voters may be sympathetic to the measure, which would allow the City to contract for its own power sources and to purchase electricity transmission lines from the City to Newark, where the city's lines end and PG&E's begin.

Brugmann welcomes the upcoming ballot measure, he said, because, for the 30 years he has been working on the issue, City Hall has thwarted every move by public power advocates to get elected officials to create a MUD. Only Alioto, when she was the president of the board in the early '90s, even got so far as sanctioning a feasibility study.

"When PG&E spits, City Hall swims," Brugmann said.

The city of San Francisco owns the rights to water and power from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir at Yosemite National Park. While the City has always benefited from the site's high-quality water, PG&E has controlled power flow into the City because the City ran out of money while laying transmission lines and PG&E covered the balance - creating a situation where the utility now owns wiring within the City, as well as the transmission lines from Newark.

According to Smeloff, the City uses about 400 megawatts of electricity a day. Hetch Hetchy provides 200 to 250 megawatts of power, depending on rainfall in the Sierra Mountains, leaving it with a shortfall that has to be made up on the open market. A "peaker" power plant being located at the SF International Airport could provide up to 50 more megawatts daily.

Alioto told the 100 or so Richmond residents who attended the meeting that public power would save the City money by cutting out the middle man.

"We can bid just as good as anyone else," she said.

McGoldrick said PG&E representatives were invited to the Town Hall Meeting but refused.