After much heated debate and with much more to come, the Redondo Beach City Council will hold a special meeting on April 10 to consider the AES power plant’s future.
The meeting will focus on the regulatory process involved in AES’s application to re-power its Redondo plant. Five regulatory groups will be invited to speak, including the California Energy Commission, the California Independent System Operator Corp., the Southern California Air Quality Management District, Southern California Edison and the California Public Utilities Commission.
“This is good,” Mayor Mike Gin said at the Feb. 18 council meeting. “We all agreed as a council that we wanted to be informed about the process. This is first step in getting informed as a body.”
Councilman Matt Kilroy was hopeful about moving on to the next step.
“This is a process that will go on for quite some time. [There has been] discussion by [the] public about why there hasn’t been more progress, but if they look at [the] record of other cities they will find it has taken many years for any results to be achieved.”
The council also discussed possibility of scheduling another meeting in the future with other groups invited to speak.
Councilman Bill Brand, who has been openly opposed to a new power plant, felt strongly that the California Coastal Conservancy should be invited to the meeting but it was decided that only the five groups would be invited to the first meeting. Brand argued the CCC was an important group because they recently published an analysis that concluded that Redondo power plant is not needed for future power generation and grid reliability.
“Frankly I don’t need to hear from these agencies,” said Brand. “I’ve already talked to them. I’m already against the new power plant. I can pass a resolution right now opposing a new power plant here and it costs nothing — you just send the signal to the Energy Commission that the community doesn’t want a new power plant. I can’t imagine anyone up here does support a new power plant. It’s not a difficult conclusion to draw.”
