Opponents of AES power plant filled the Redondo Beach Unified School District’s Board of Education meeting Tuesday night in an attempt to persuade the board to pass a resolution opposing AES’s efforts to repower.
Board members declined to take a stand on Measure A – the March citywide vote that proposes outlawing power generation at the AES site – but decided to draft a more generally worded resolution opposing pollution and the local plant’s repowering.
Former School Board member David Wiggins urged the board to take a principled stand against the power plant and also against redevelopment.
“I hope you’ll give some consideration that the health of our children is a primary concern of the school district,” said Wiggins. “I hope you’ll give some consideration that wise use of the land is a concern of the school district, it is now and always has been concerned with it at its very core.”
Four high school athletes illustrated to the board the effects the pollution has on their bodies by telling them about football and water polo practices when friends were overcome with asthma attacks. Another student showed a picture of a cloud creeping over the school grounds from a smokestack on the horizon.
Health care professionals like Manhattan Beach-based Neuropsychologist Roger Light also spoke to the board.
“Other districts have paid for my input, you’re going to get it free tonight,” Light said. “…I know the role of school board is a difficult one – politics shouldn’t be a priority for the board, but some things such as our children’s health are too important to ignore. Sometimes you have to take a stand. In the case of allowing AES to rebuild a power plant a stones throw from our city’s high school is in my view a no-brainer.”
Light, parent Dawn Esser and City Council member Bill Brand argued that rebuilding the power plant would lead to an increase in pollution. Light acknowledged that natural gas-powered plants, such as the one AES proposes to build, are “cleaner” than coal-burning plants, but argued if such plants operate with greater frequency, pollutants will also increase.
“The hypocrisy of trying to encourage healthy eating habits and developing new minds while refusing to take a stand against rebuilding a power plant that will significantly adverse the health and brain development… is striking to me,” Light said.
AES Southland President Eric Pendergraft countered such claims, saying that the plant would be cleaner and more efficient. He also reminded the board about previous AES contributions to the Redondo Beach Education Foundation and defended electricity itself.
“Not only will the new plant increase the funding for the schools, it will provide an efficient and reliable source of electricity into the future,” Pendergraft said. “Electricity is fundamental to the education and development of our children. It powers computers, it heats and cools your classrooms – it provides light to study by and drives our economy providing jobs that you’re so busy preparing your students for.”
Board members made a distinction regarding any possible resolution.
“The resolution would be, in my mind, about the power plant and a declaration on our part about the school district’s position on the impacts of a power plant,” board member Drew Gamet said. “It doesn’t necessarily need to be about the legislation that’s going up for vote. But we do need to take a position on the implications of this new industrial complex in the middle of our residential town.”
Board member Todd Loewenstein underlined the board’s responsibility protect children’s health and noted its involvement in the Blue Zones public health initiative. “I cannot recall any… Blue Zone city that would say, ‘Lets build a power plant,’” he said.
Board members Jane Diehl and Laura Emdee as well as board president Anita Avrick expressed misgivings about wading into the politics of the issue even as each affirmed opposition to pollution. In the end the board unanimously voted to have Emdee and Gamet draft a resolution against increased pollution for approval in early 2013. ER
