Councilman Bill Brand led a rally Friday afternoon that sought to send a message to local, state, and AES Corporation officials: power plant, be gone.
About 30 protesters lined the intersection between Pacific Coast Highway, Catalina Avenue and Herondo Street – with the AES power plant looming in the background – and waved signs in the air during rush hour Friday.
“Where is the Beach?” asked one sign.
“AES Must Go” read another.
Brand, who has long advocated a park where the power plant now exists, said that the rally comes at a crucial time when the California Energy Commission is considering which plants shall be allowed to repower.
“We are trying to send a message to state officials that there will be public opposition to repowering the power plant in Redondo Beach,” Brand said.
Brand last month made a motion for the City Council to direct City Attorney Mike Webb to explore the possibility of changing zoning for the plant site to no longer include power production as an allowed use at some point in the near future. Brand said other cities in California have successfully pursued this route. His motion received no support from his fellow councilmen.
“We don’t want to buy their land,” Brand said. “They just can’t rebuild a new power plant…[But] there was no action from our City Council to stop the reindustrialization of our waterfront.”
Councilman Steve Aspel, who has frequently sparred with Brand regarding waterfront issues, called the rally a “publicity stunt” and said that Brand’s campaign bordered on the absurd. “It would be the same thing as if I got 50 people and marched around Bill Brand’s condo complex saying, ‘Let’s tear this down and build a park.’ This is private property, plain and simple. AES is an easy target right now.”
Aspel said that Brand and the “slow growth” activist group he is affiliated with are trying to distract people from the position they find themselves in at the upcoming election. Building a Better Redondo successfully sued the city, but the result, according to Aspel, the rest of the city council and Webb, could be the opposite of what they intended – the repealing of all zoning since the mid 1970s and a return to the nearly unlimited zoning of 1964.
“They are fighting for their political future,” Aspel said, adding, “It’s ironic that Bill Brand is suing the city he represents and wanting to tear down a power plant that is private property.”
AES Southland president Eric Pendergraft said Brand’s rally served no constructive purpose.
“It’s obviously counterproductive, and it doesn’t do anything to try to find any common ground or find any solution that would be mutually beneficial,” Pendergraft said.
Pendergraft said that AES is indeed planning to modernize the power plant. He said those plans include a much smaller footprint for the power generating facility itself and that the corporation is seeking public input for possibly utilizing the rest of the space for a public-serving use.
“There will be excess property,” Pendergraft said. “We are open to considering all sorts of different alternative uses. We certainly don’t have any decisions made and we want to seek public input and do something that would be supported by the community – whether that is community gardens, baseball fields, a cultural resource or a marine education center. We are open to anything. But it is not productive if their sole purpose is to put us out of business and run us out of town.”
One of the residents at the rally said ridding the city of the power plant was a matter of life or death for some residents. Susan Satya said that she lives nearby the plant and frequently suffered headaches at night, when the plant’s smoke stacks emitted. This year, she said, she finally had a brain tumor removed. She directly attributes her illness to AES.
“I am the canary in the mine, and I trust my instincts,” Satya said.
BBR president Jim Light said that the council’s refusal to act prompted the rally.
“We have a once in a lifetime opportunity of getting rid of the power plant, and right now, the City Council is ignoring that opportunity,” Light said.
Aspel noted that both Light and Brand fought the proposed Heart of the City project, which would have replaced or greatly reduced the power plant and built a residential neighborhood in its stead.
“If the Heart of the City had passed, the power plant would be gone and it wouldn’t be polluting the neighborhood or the ocean or any of the things they are claiming,” Aspel said. “Of course, that wouldn’t have been to their liking, either.” ER
