A two-person subcommittee of the California Energy Commission voted last Thursday to approve the permit for the Tracy Peaker Plant, which sits about half a mile from city limits on Schulte Road west of town. On March 24, the full commission is expected to vote on the permit, and GWF Energy spokesman Riley Jones seems confident his company will get the go-ahead it needs to rebuild the plant.
“We complied with all the requirements and addressed all the concerns, so it was not a surprise” when the subcommittee approved its permit, Jones said.
The plant was granted a permit in 2003 to run 8,000 hours a year, but GWF has turned on its turbines only about 100 hours per year since then.
That made no difference to regulators, however, who still made GWF offset pollution as though the plant ran at 8,000 hours per year. That limit will remain if the plant is converted. Jones said the new plant will probably run between 5,000 and 7,000 hours a year.
The power company has had to buy pollution credits from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, the agency that regulates air quality in a basin that runs from San Joaquin County to Bakersfield.
Credits can be created when a company that has a permit to pollute goes out of business, for instance, or if a company installs better technology to cut its emissions but still has a permit to pollute at a higher level.
Those rights to pollute are then held by the air district, which sells them to companies like GWF that need to offset pollution of their own, according to the air district’s Dave Warner. Money generated from the sale of credits is used by the district to cut pollution in various ways, such as converting buses from diesel to natural gas.
The air district often makes companies buy 1½ pounds of credits for every pound of pollution they generate, Warner said.
In addition to pollution credits, the air district’s board OK’d an extra $319,000 that GWF will pay so the district can cut smog in and around Tracy.
The most cost-effective pollution cuts, Warner said, are to convert irrigation pumps from internal combustion engines to electric motors.
GWF plans to make the peaker plant one that cranks out 325 megawatts, which is enough electricity to power about 325,000 homes.
It will run much more efficiently than the peaker plant does now, Jones and regulators say, and will be able to produce power with more than 60 percent less smog and greenhouse gases per megawatt generated.
But because it’s only a part-time plant, it produces little pollution at the moment. The energy commission says the peaker plant spews about 3,400 pounds of smog a year, but under its permit, it could produce as much as 180,000 pounds of smog and more than 1 million metric tones of greenhouse gases, which the air district has no jurisdiction to regulate.
“It’s a big jump, but not as unusual as you might think,” Warner said.
Using computer models, the air district can show where the pollution from the converted plant will go, Warner said, and it determined that “there’s no health risk from a change in operation” of the peaker plant.
State regulators want to make sure new plants are efficient and comply with environmental regulations, said Michele Demetras, energy commission spokeswoman.
At the same time, the commission wants plants to produce power affordably for users while making it attractive for companies to build them.
The company’s peaker plant permit runs through 2013, and GWF expects to shut down the plant two years early to get to work on its conversion, Jones said.
From 2003 to 2008, the company donated $50,000 a year to Tracy charities, but it upped that to $55,000 two years ago, including four $2,500 scholarships for high school seniors.
“We want to not pay lip service, but to actually become a good corporate member of any community in which we’re located,” Jones said.
So what kind of doofus would be opposed to using algae to run your car. Algae is a fast growing fuel. Take a look at your fishtank.
Just add sunlight.
Doofus' not included.
"industry lobbies to keep nearly all regulation at the state rather than federal level, saying that the states do a good job of regulating. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise."
Tracymomplus5 take a look at the person standing in front of these windmills on this website ( http://www.jerrymcnerney.org/ ) and tell us how the federal government does a better job of regulating anything?
Are you aware that the energy plant has to purchase 'energy credits' because the windmills in the picture are shut down every year and can only generate less than a fraction of a percent of our energy needs?
Also, why on earth would you take your picture in front of windmills that cost the taxpayers a fortune and don't even work?
If you can picture the problem these liberals at the federal level have created then we can actually get somewhere. It's called "cap and trade".
One Democrat leader in CA is actually opposed to solar panels in the desert. Maybe she will take her picture next to a solar panel and put that on her website too?
No wonder California is broke.
You have enlightened us all to the fact that you are NOT a Tracy homeowner, you know little about Insurance, you know less about about Govt Policy, you are an infantile person with your "Mother's underwear" statements...and since you think you know the color of my mother's underwear, you are also a Necropheliac (look it up).
Thank you for the clarifications! Now we know how seriously to take your posts!
I'm moving on...hopefully you are too (out of Tracy!)
not favorable in attempting to get health insurance?
Just do things right the first time, in reducing the emissions, I wish.
CN
I also didn't say I thought that this plant would lower my electric bill. read more carefully. As for our health insurance premiums, I didn't realize that my health insurance company was basing my premium on my zip code. I actually thought that they were basing my premiums on the fact that I and You (presumably) have to subsidize the cost of free healthcare to those who can't or wont pay for it themselves yet still feel entitled to it.
There is NO promise or implication of that! What it WILL lower is your property value! Who will want to move to Tracy when the first thing they see is a factory and a powerplant spewing smoke and whatever else 16 hours/day directly upwind from the town...not to mention right next to the school where their kids may eventually go! This is a disaster for us who own here and plan to be here for the next 5-10 years!
"Tracyresdnt" who wrote below obviously is not a homeowner here, and cares less about his/her health and the health our community than he/she does about saving a SUPPOSED couple of bucks on their utility bill! What about your health insurance premium going up because you live in a toxic ZIP code? That will MORE than off-set your imaginary utility bill savings! Or are you just waiting for Obama to cover the health insurance bill for you?
I hope the "Full Commission" vote will block this expansion as the "Two person Sub-Committee" seems like they don't care what happens to the residents of our community (health-wise and financially).
Natural gas is a gaseous fossil fuel consisting primarily of methane, but includes significant quantities of ethane,propane, butane, and pentane – heavier hydrocarbons removed prior to use as a consumer fuel – as well as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, helium and hydrogen sulfide.
Natural gas is not the “clean” fuel it’s purported to be.
Toxic metals like lead and mercury can be found
organically-bound in natural gas, as can radioactive radon and other toxic contaminants. Natural gas is found “associated” with oil in oil fields, or can be found “nonassociated” (dissolved or isolated in fields of natural gas), and in coal beds (as coalbed methane). Since the 1990s, with the development of slickwater hydraulic fracturing, massive shale formations across the U.S. have begun to yield large amounts of natural gas. In the late 1990s, there was a mad rush to build around 1,000 new power plants, nearly all of them natural gas fired. Grassroots community opposition stopped most of them, but about 400 were built. As gas prices started rising dramatically after in 2000, many of these power
plants sat idle or operated only when necessary. Another mad rush of development followed, starting around 2003, as proposals for over 60 new liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals were proposed in North America (40 in the U.S.), so that gas could be imported from across
oceans, requiring that we go to war for gas as well as oil. Only a few new terminals were built due to a combination of community opposition and falling gas prices – the result of the economic depression plus increased supply from new domestic reserves opened up by hydraulic fracturing. 98.5% of natural gas consumed in the U.S. comes to us
via pipeline from the U.S. and Canada. However, natural gas production is nearing its peak in North America. Over the past decade, we’re drilling more and more, but production is leveling off and will drop sharply in the not too-distant future. The recent shale developments are providing a slight recent surge in domestic production, but the hype will likely be short-lived since the typical shale gas well declines 81% in the first two years of production.
World-wide, natural gas production will peak in a plateau between 2027 and 2045, before dropping dramatically.
Natural Gas is Worse for the Climate than Coal
Since methane, the principle component of natural gas, is as much as 25 times as potent as CO2, if only 2% of the gas moving through pipelines leaks, the effect on climate change is thought to be equal to that of burning coal. Experts say that in fact, 3-5% loss in transmission is normal, and up to 20% is known to happen.
Hydraulic Fracturing
Hydraulic fracturing is a natural gas extraction process by which water, usually mixed with highly toxic chemicals, is forced down a drilled well at extremely high pressure to create or expand fractures, releasing gas trapped in rock
formations. Proppants (small particles such as sand or synthetic beads) hold open the newly-created fractures so that released gas can flow toward the well. The process is also known as fracking or hydrofracking. When drilling for gas in geologic formations where the gas is tightly bound in rock (“low-permeability gas reservoirs”),
hydraulic fracturing is used in combination with horizontal drilling, in which the drill bit is gradually turned sideways to penetrate long distances away from the vertical well bore
(hole). Because of the very large quantities of water and pressure needed for this process, it is called horizontal drilling / high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or HD/HVHF. HD/HVHF is an industrial activity and the areas where it is used become polluted industrial zones. Rural areas are
often exploited, but suburban and urban areas are
increasingly subjected to an invasion of heavy equipment and dangerous activities.
Water HD/HVHF gas wells can require anywhere from 1 to 9 million gallons of water per “frack.” Wells have to be refracked approximately every 5 years to restimulate production. Such high water use creates issues such as where to obtain it, traffic and pollution from getting hundreds of heavy truckloads of water to the drill site, deliberate contamination of the water, and trucking all of
the wastewater away to be disposed of somewhere.
Wastewater must be stored onsite at leas temporarily, leading to repeated problems with leaks and overflow during heavy rains. Additionally, ancient “formation water”
may be released in the well completion process. This 'brine' is typically far saltier than seawater and presents serious disposal issues. Spills and other unintended releases are inevitable industrial accidents. Clandestine
dumping is widely suspected and has been reported.
Chemicals & Sand
The chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing are known to cause a wide variety of health problems. Increasingly,reports from affected areas indicate a prevalence of serious and incurable disorders in people and animals living near natural gas extraction or transmission facilities (pipelines and compressor stations). Even the special
sand used as a proppant has a destructive effect on the communities where it is mined. See www.ccc-wis.com
Pipelines & Compressor Stations
Natural gas is transported with networks of pipelines, with smaller gathering lines joining into larger interstate pipelines and branching out again to reach various markets. Pipeline routes are dotted with compressor stations, where energy is consumed to pressurize the gas to keep it moving – sometimes thousands of miles until it
reaches its destination. Compressor stations run
continuously and are very noisy. Pipelines cut through forests, farms and residential neighborhoods and even run under rivers and lakes, disturbing a variety of environments, sometimes in very damaging ways, like where toxic sediments on lake bottoms are stirred up by “jet trenching” used to bury pipelines in a lake bed.
Pipeline routes are frequently established through the process of eminent domain (government taking of private land). The aging pipeline infrastructure leads to frequent leaks, which regularly produce explosions that are costly in
property damage and lives lost.
Power Plants
68.5% of natural gas is used for heating ndustrial
processes, homes and businesses. 2.8% is used in
transportation. The remaining 28.6% is burned in power plants to make electricity. After approximately 400 new gas-burning power plants were built since the late 1990s, there is now 37% more natural gas electric generating capacity than coal. However, more than half of that capacity is not used (which is why coal provides three times more electricity than gas does).
Natural gas burning power plants are major air polluters,
releasing carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides, fine particulate matter, ammonia, volatile organic compounds and a long list of toxic and hazardous air pollutants, such as lead, mercury, benzo(a)pyrene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. A single 1,000 MW gas plant can legally release over 3 million pounds of regulated air pollutants a year, including 40 pounds of lead, 28 pounds of mercury and over 33,000 pounds of hazardous air pollutants, many of which cause cancer. This doesn’t count CO2, since CO2 isn’t yet regulated. As little as 0.002
pounds of mercury deposited annually into a 20-acre lake can contaminate fish to a level where they’re unsafe to eat.
Noise
Heavy truck traffic, drilling, and fracking are all extremely loud and invasive for people living nearby. Extraction related activities go on around the clock, 7 days a week.
The development and completion of gas wells continues without letup, with one day of cessation per year: Christmas. In addition to this being intensely stressful, people living near compressor stations can develop a life threatening condition called vibro-acoustic disease.
Compressor stations and power plants (especially the air cooled kind) are also significant noise polluters.
Air pollution
In addition to the air pollution from power lants,
communities near drilling operations, compressor
stations and natural gas storage tanks also suffer
from polluted air. At drilling sites, this results from diesel exhaust from heavy truck traffic and from the extraction activities. Volatile organic compounds evaporate easily from the chemicals used in drilling and fracking, as well as from the extracted gas. In Fort Worth, Texas, in the Barnett Shale, natural gas storage tanks and
compressors are thought to have as great a negative impact on air quality and be as great a cause of the increasing smog as all automotive traffic in the Metroplex. Recent video footage taken by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality using an infrared camera clearly shows fugitive hydrocarbon emissions billowing from
storage tanks. Storage tanks are designed for a certain legally-permitted amount of leakage. In the small town of DISH, Texas, where numerous pipelines and compressor stations have been built in recent years, there has been a corresponding die-off of trees, livestock have died of
mysterious causes, and humans are developing a range of unusual medical problems.
Regulation
Over decades, the oil and gas industry has lobbied for and gotten exemptions from a wide array of federal laws, including laws requiring environmental impact statements, laws regulating hazardous waste and toxic site cleanup, laws requiring reporting of toxic emissions and laws
to protect the air and drinking water. The
industry lobbies to keep nearly all regulation at the state rather than federal level, saying that the states do a good job of regulating. The evidence strongly suggests otherwise.
Seems your idea of great town is a bunch of Powerplants and Factories, all with Hybrid cars in their parking lots so it's OK. Low emmission cars and trucks are a great thing...hopefully the wave of the future...but SO WHAT if our town will negate all their good by adding 53 times more crap into our local air?
Sorry, this powerplant expansion upwind from a town of 80,000 is just a bad, bad, bad idea. I agree we need the power as our valley population grows, but it should be moved (along with Owens Illinois plant) to a far more rural part of the valley...NOT directly next to (and upwind) from 80,000 people!
I hope our politicians enjoy their gifts from the plant owners...but it will be more than off-set by their lower property values.
I however will feel much better on those spare those freezing spare the air nights when we cant burn our fireplace or pellet stove so we can save the air.....
The hypocracy of the green movement is laughable. We are supposed to feel better about saving our planet by blindly thinking that recycling, purchasing "green" and "organic" products somehow makes a difference, when you have this plant generating power by burning semi truckload after semi truck load of yard waste spewing out a million tones of poison over our city.
If you really want to "save" the planet you would say no to the global marketing "green" movement, and put your efforts into stopping the creation and use of the true planet killers like this powerplant.
I however will fill much better on those spare those freezing spare the air nights when we cant burn our fireplace or pellet stove so we can save the air.....
The hypocracy of the green movement is laughable. We are supposed to feel better about saving our planet by blindly thinking that recycling, purchasing "green" and "organic" products somehow makes a difference, when you have this plant generating power by burning semi truckload after semi truck load of yard waste spewing out a million tones of poison over our city.
If you really want to "save" the planet you would say no to the global marketing "green" movement, and put your efforts into stopping the creation and use of the true planet killers like this powerplant.
Concentrations of PM above the current standards may result in harmful health effects. Since the small particles that make up PM can easily penetrate deep into the lungs, scientists have studied the effects of this type of pollution on human health. Both short- and long-term exposures to PM have been shown to lead to harmful health effects. A large body of evidence has shown significant associations between measured levels of PM outdoors and daily increases in the numbers of human deaths. In addition, scientists have observed higher rates of hospitalizations, emergency room visits and doctor's visits for respiratory illnesses or heart disease during times of high PM concentrations. During these periods of high PM levels, scientists also observed the worsening of both asthma symptoms and acute and chronic bronchitis. Scientists have found a relationship between high PM levels and reductions in various aspects of the healthy functioning of people's lungs.
Which groups are most susceptible to health effects from PM?
The Elderly
People with Heart and / or Lung Disease
Children and Infants
The elderly and people with heart and/or lung diseases are particularly at risk to the harmful effects from PM exposure. A data analysis from ARB's Children's Health Study shows health effects in children, as well. This study showed that in communities highly polluted with PM, children's lungs developed more slowly and did not move air as efficiently as children's lungs in clean air communities. Children and infants are susceptible to harm from inhaling pollutants such as PM because they inhale more air per pound of body weight than do adults - they breathe faster, spend more time outdoors and have smaller body sizes. In addition, children's immature immune systems may cause them to be more susceptible to PM than healthy adults. Further research may clarify the relationship between PM exposure and children's health.
Do you think this location would be better spot for you to grow your Organic produce? We saw your article in the Peace and Freedom, paper.
Or as an option we could burn cow muffins for power. How green of you.
Oh worry worry worry, what am I gonna do, my house is only 3 miles away. Guess it's time ta pack my bags an get outa Dodge afore somethin bad happens.
Can't use coal, it makes sulphur dioxide that turns inta sulphuric acid rain.
Can't use nuclear cause it makes nuclear waste ya can't get rid of an makes an interestin view as th cows glow by. But I am not too sure about that cus Obama now seems ta think it's a good idea.
Can't use water cause it damages th streams an rivers an keeps th fishies from runnin up stream ta breed.
Can't use wind no more cause it kills th little birdies.
Can't use solar cause it heats up th air around th panels an prevents th light from reachin th ground ta keep the little critters thair alive an kickin.
Can't use vegetable oil or alcohol cause ya can't get enough of it fer everyone ta use.
Can't burn wood cause it creates smog and excess CO2 in th air.
And ya sure as heck can't use natural gas cus some crackpots are worried it will all blow up an kill everyone around it fer miles.
Can't use hydrogen cause ya might have a Hindenburg type of incident.
I'd suggest usin hot air but I don't think me an th crackpots around th US an Congress could generate enough ta satisfy th need.
So I guess thairs no alternative but ta turn out yer lights, disconnect from th power grid and live like they did back before they had electricity.
But wait a minute. Wasn't that wood in th fireplace an kerosene or coal-oil burnin in th lamps at night? An in th big cities didn't they use ta light th streets with natural gas an heat thair homes with coal or fuel-oil?
Th nerve of these power companies who generate power ta sell to us consumers. Why don't they just stop all this nonsense and end all of these bad things?
Guess we're gonna have ta go back further than a couple of hundred years an back at least 100,000 yars ago before th cavemen discovered fire. Yep, that should do it.
But I thank we would have a rough go at it without our computers, internet, cell-phones an all th little gadgets we seem ta have become dependent on.
Guess tair's no easy answer ta this major problem.
Residents up to 20 miles away reported hearing the blast at about 11:19 a.m. at the Kleen Power Plant in Middletown, a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut.
"There is no present or continuing threat to anybody from either substances getting into the atmosphere or of a possible subsequent explosion," Middletown Mayor Sebastian Giuliano said, adding terrorism has been ruled out.
He said plant workers were purging a natural gas pipeline when the explosion occurred.
"Urban search-and-rescue teams are on the premises ... with dogs, attempting to locate and account for further victims," Giuliano said.
It's unknown how many people were working in the plant, which was about 95 percent complete, at the time of the explosion. Multiple contractors were involved in the project, Giuliano said, complicating efforts to account for those who may have been on the site.
"[Each contractor] has their own foreperson, their own employee list, so we're trying to sort that out," Giuliano said.
Deputy Fire Marshal Al Santostefano said later Sunday that no one has come forward with any names of missing people and dogs have not detected signs of life beneath the rubble left by the explosion.
The plant was expected to go online this summer, Giuliano said.
Santostefano initially said about 50 people, most of them construction workers, were working at the time, but Giuliano said "we don't know that as a hard number right now."
"What I've been told by the owners of the project is that there could be anywhere from 100 to 200 people working on the site on any given day," Giuliano said.
But Santostefano later said the numbers Giuliano cited were weekday figures, and he repeated his estimate of 50 to 60 people at the site Sunday when the explosion occurred. He said he thought most of those escaped the blast.
A no-fly zone was established over the site because of the unstable structure, Gov. Jodi Rell announced Sunday night.
Middlesex Hospital in Middletown said it received 11 patients from the explosion. One patient with serious injuries was flown to a hospital in Hartford, and another was transferred to Yale New Haven Hospital, according to a statement on Middlesex's Web site. Two others had minor injuries and were treated and released. The remaining seven patients sustained injuries "mainly to the extremities, including broken bones, blunt trauma and abdominal pains," the statement said.
Emergency room physician Dr. Jonathan Bankoff told reporters that some patients reported being thrown 30 or 40 feet by the blast.
Two people were airlifted directly to the Hartford hospital from the scene, Middlesex spokesman R. Brian Albert said. A center was being set up at Middletown's City Hall for relatives of plant workers, he said.
As of late Sunday afternoon, the hospital said it was not expecting more patients from the plant.
After the explosion, it took a while for emergency crews to get into the plant, Santostefano said, because the plant was on fire and the natural gas had to be turned off at the source. No major incidents at the site had been reported since construction began there a couple of years ago, he said.
People miles away reported hearing or feeling the blast.
"It felt like the house was shaking," Peter Moore, who lives about 10 miles away in Durham, told CNN. He said he thought at first there had been a traffic accident on his street or there was a problem with his house.
Moore said his mother, who lives in Woodbridge, about 20 miles away from the plant, also said she heard the explosion, and said it "sounded like someone pounded on the back door a couple of times."
"It was almost like an earthquake," nearby resident Lynn Townsend told CNN affiliate WTNH. She said she heard the explosion and went outside to see "a very big, bright orange flame" between the plant's two smokestacks, and immediately dialed 911.
"It really shook the house," she said. "Everybody was scared. The kids started to cry."
WTNH.com coverage of Middletown explosion
Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance told WTNH his agency has received "an immense amount of inquiries" from residents who heard or felt the explosion.
The site is a 620-megawatt gas-fired power plant, according to plant manager Gordon Holk.