The city of Los Angeles has launched an aggressive lobbying campaign to roll back tough new state regulations meant to limit the environmental damage power plants inflict on the ocean.
Officials are pushing a last-minute bill in the Legislature that would delay by up to 11 years a new state mandate requiring that the city’s municipal utility overhaul three coastal power plants to reduce their use of seawater for cooling.
The current deadlines for meeting the seawater restrictions would cost $2.3 billion more than city officials planned because it would force them to modernize power plants ahead of schedule. The expense would result in a 6% rate hike for electricity customers for at least eight years, officials said.
“That’s money that will cause jobs to be lost in our economy and money that we can’t use to invest in other renewable energy initiatives that we have,” said Austin Beutner, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “jobs czar” and temporary top executive at the Department of Water and Power, the nation’s largest city-owned utility.
With just a week left in the legislative session, the DWP bypassed the normal bill-approval process -- which typically involves multiple public hearings. To get around rules that prohibit new bills from being introduced this late, utility executives persuaded a committee chaired by Assemblyman Steve Bradford (D-Gardena) to remove language from an existing bill on renewable energy and insert the exemption for the DWP on Friday.
Environmental groups are scurrying to block the proposal. The regulations, they say, have already been vetted through a five-year public approval process.
"Now here is the LADWP coming in at the last second with a special-interest exemption,” said Sierra Club California lobbyist Jim Metropulos.
More details will soon be posted here soon.
-- Patrick McGreevey and David Zahniser