Grayson Dirty Energy GWP Meeting Report

The Glendale Water & Power Commission meeting last night was very well attended, with over 50 members of the public taking time out from their busy lives to oppose the Grayson dirty energy proposal and advocate for a cleaner Glendale. We had to wait over 2.5hrs to have our say, but when the time came, 21 people got up and spoke against the project in its current iteration, and not one member of the public spoke in favor of the proposed $500 million dollar expansion. My comments to the Commission are below. I was very moved by the sincerity and depth of knowledge of those who showed up.

Two big takeaways from the meeting for me were:

a) GWP's General Manager Steve Zurn admitted that this proposal is the result of lack of foresight from GWP a decade ago [video], when they could have foreseen the need for modest, phased upgrades to the plant to smoothly bridge the gap towards cleaner energy sources, but failed to act.

b) GWP's highly paid consultants ADMITTED they had not deeply studied many cleaner alternatives in their draft EIR [video], such as sites already controlled by the city of Glendale that could accommodate solar installations.

So the geniuses who didn't foresee the need for phased upgrades now propose throwing $500 million dollars away on a massive fossil fuel plant expansion right as cleaner, less expensive alternatives are becoming available. Inexcusable.

All of the Water & Power commissioners asked some good questions, particularly Roland Kedikian and Sarojini Lall. All of the commissioners saw the need for upgrades to Grayson, but questioned the size of the GWP proposal in the face of projected energy needs. Everyone seemed baffled by GWP's failure to include cleaner alternatives in a diversified matrix of solutions instead of one giant outdated fossil fuel plant.

If you didn't make it out to last night's meeting, there is another meeting on Thursday, October 19th. Also, please e-mail the members of the Glendale City Council and and ask them to do what LADWP did and commission an independent study of cleaner alternatives. The public also has until 11/3 to submit comments to Erik Krause in the City Planner’s office: ekrause@glendaleca.gov

my comments:

Please watch Daniel Brotman's point by point takedown of the rationale given by GWP:

Full video of the meeting is here: http://glendale.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=17&clip_id=6426

Some highlights:
0:00-1:18 draft EIR presentation
1:18 questions from commissioners begin
1:45 stranded asset questions
1:48 retirement age of boilers question from kedikian
1:49 "should have planned for this 20 years ago" answer from Zurn
2:05 discussion of lack of alternative energy analysis
2:13 discussion of projected capacity vs need, and excess capacity
2:16 "balancing this out" comments from avanessian
2:24 public comment begins with a thorough takedown of the proposal from Professor Daniel Brotman
2:42 me
....lots more speakers...
then
3:23-3:34 additional comments from commissioners
3:35 oral communications, 1 additional speaker against






Previously: Don't Let GWP Increase Air Pollution in Glendale

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