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Did you know?

Obsolete operations at the South Bay Power Plant (SBPP), located in Chula Vista are damaging the San Diego Bay ecosystem and degrading marine life due to discharges of waste heat, chlorine and other toxic chemicals. The plant’s cooling system kills marine life in roughly 20 percent of the South Bay water everyday. The SBPP uses over 4,000 gallons of chlorine every month to kill marine life in cooling water it draws from sensitive South San Diego Bay. Inadequate water discharge permits have allowed these destructive operations for more than 40 years. This grossly inefficient plant also is a source of air pollution and a blight on the community.

What’s happening now?

The Regional Water Quality Control Board is holding a public hearing in order to issue a five-year renewal of the South Bay Power Plant’s water discharge permit. It is imperative that you as a community member attends the hearing to express your concerns over the massive and negative impacts the power plant has on marine life in South San Diego Bay. The written comment period is already closed so only oral testimony will be received by the Regional Board. So please attend the hearing!

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Attend the Regional Board Hearing on:

May 8, 2002, 9 a.m.
Regional Board offices
9174 Sky Park Court Suite 100, San Diego 

Please make the following points at the Regional Board Hearing:

• The permit must be revised to require strict limits on temperature, dissolved oxygen, chlorine, and reductions to impacts to marine life.

• The permit must be strengthened to require monitoring at the actual point of discharge and full monitoring required.

• The Regional Board must make a finding that the power plant discharges are negatively impacting marine life in sensitive South Bay must be fully mitigated.

• Urge the Regional Board to take broad actions to ensure that the use of bay waters for the cooling process is ended as soon as possible and damage to the Bay life and fisheries nursery areas is restored.

Background

The South Bay Power Plant (SBPP) has operated on San Diego Bay for more than 40 years. It uses up to 601 million gallons a day of bay water in its cooling system. The result is that 20% of South Bay waters that should be biologically rich are systematically sterilized every day. The cooling process impacts marine life in several ways. It kills millions of marine organisms through trapping them in the system. It uses thousands of gallons of chlorine each month to sterilize the bay water, discharges toxic metals like copper and zinc, and heats discharged Bay water as high as 104 EF. It is truly "cooling that kills."

The evidence shows that the plant is destroying tens of thousands of adult fishes and millions of juvenile and larval stage marine organisms every year. However, the Regional Board has not made a finding that the SBPP is impacting marine habitats, estuarine habitats, and fisheries’ beneficial uses in South San Diego Bay. It is important that the Regional Board make the finding that these "beneficial" uses are being seriously impacted by the power plant.

Duke is very opposed to a more stringent permit. Duke’s position is that their science proves that discharge is not impacting the Bay and the proposed permit provides adequate protection and is fully compliant with rules governing such permits. This is incorrect on both counts. In fact, their data proves that there are impacts to the Bay from discharge on marine life and that the biodiversity in the South Bay is substantially altered in areas closest to the discharge. The compliance points are far from where the pollutants are dumped into the Bay and there are important limits missing from the permit altogether, most notably copper and a maximum temperature limit.

Now is the time to stop Cooling that Kills!

To sign up to attend the hearing please call Nohelia Ramos at (619) 235-0281, ext. 104 or email her at NoheliaR@environmentalhealth.org