by Garth Meyer
A large crowd gathered in the vacant field above the AES power plant in Redondo Beach New Year’s Eve to mark the operation’s shutdown after 69 years. An earlier plant on the site went back to 1907.
City and state officials spoke, from Mayor Bill Brand, to State Senator Ben Allen, many saluting Brand for his 20-year effort to organize and advocate for the plant’s closure.
“Hard work just makes it all the more gratifying,” Brand told the crowd. “This truly is a historic day.”
In August, the California State Water Resources Control Board decided not to extend AES Redondo as a backup “peaker plant” as it had done for three years past a planned shutdown in 2020 – a date that was set in 2010.
While Redondo is now decommissioned, other similar ocean-cooled California plants were extended for three more years, Ormond Beach, Huntington Beach and Los Alamitos. Scattergood in Playa Del Rey was extended for five years.
“After 20 years of public drama… the wishes of the voted public has won (in Redondo Beach),” Brand said. “After this, we don’t know what’s going to happen. We do know this power plant is closing. There will be something better if the public stays engaged.”
He quoted Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
State Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi commended the mayor.
“After hearing from all sides, I thought, Bill Brand is right, we need to shut down this power plant,” Muratsuchi said.
He and State Senator Allen introduced three bills in recent years to champion the local residents’ efforts.
“Killed by special interests in Sacramento,” Muratsuchi said.
Allen told of gathering information on the issue first as a candidate for office.
“Nine and a half years ago, I had a four-hour dinner with Bill Brand at Captain Kidd’s,” he said to hoots of laughter. “It wouldn’t end. That was a good thing.”
He paid tribute to Brand’s “dogged, relentless, engaged” efforts to shut down the plant.
Local advocate and current harbor commissioner Jim Light noted to the audience that $15 million has been put together so far in grants for the next chapter of the 51-acre site.
Brand, Light and many others have long sought for the land to be turned into a park.
The land is currently the subject of a bankruptcy dispute between its private owners and AES, over outstanding payments of $28 million.
See full story on the plant’s shutdown in next week’s Easy Reader. ER
