California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante rebuked the Port District yesterday for failing to prod tenant Duke Energy into revealing where it plans to relocate a replacement facility for the South Bay Power Plant.

Under terms of its 10 1/2 -year lease with the San Diego Unified Port District, Duke is to dismantle the plant by the end of its $110 million lease and build a replacement inland or elsewhere on the Chula Vista site.

"Every six months or so, I ask the port, `Where's your plan? Where's your plan?` They still have no plan," Bustamante said.

Bruce Hollingsworth, the Port District's chief executive officer, said he was unaware of Bustamante making repeated requests for information on Duke's plans. Hollingsworth said he and other port officials met in Sacramento with Bustamante in January to brief him on the power plant.

He could not recall a request for information from Bustamante before or since that time, Hollingsworth said.

"I'm sure that if the lieutenant governor asked us for information, we would have responded," he said.

Duke's lease with the port went into effect in April 1999. Bustamante, in San Diego for a meeting of the State Lands Commission, which he chairs, said he wants the port to aggressively pursue information from Duke and share the company's replacement plan with the public by the end of the year.

"The Port Commission needs to stop hiring high-priced lobbyists in Sacramento and put its money in to studying and figuring out what needs to be done to get that ugly thing off our coast."

Bustamante said the State Lands Commission will audit the contract to make sure Duke is meeting required performance standards. The state panel manages 4.5 million acres of coastal waters, navigable inland waterways and public lands, including the San Diego Bay tidelands administered locally by the Port District.

Duke is meeting all of the requirements of its contract with the port, including updating the district twice a year on efforts to find a replacement site, said Duke spokesman Patrick Mullen. Under its contract, Mullen said, Duke has until June 2006 to publicize its site selection as part of an application to the California Energy Commission for a new plant.

Mullen said Duke has looked at about two dozen sites, many of them with "fatal flaws," such as being too far from a natural gas source or a transmission facility.

A site in Otay Mesa, which environmentalists have touted, is unsuitable because it is too far from a transmission facility, he said.

Disclosing prospective sites would alert real estate speculators, who would drive up the property costs, Mullen said.

Port officials and Mullen stressed that the South Bay plant, built in 1960, will be dismantled under terms of the lease. The state has designated the plant as a "must-run" facility, so it cannot be destroyed before another plant is built, "to keep the lights on in San Diego," Mullen said.

Officials in Chula Vista, which derives revenue from having the plant on its bay front, have requested a replacement plant be built near the current one, Hollingsworth said. The city's request is being considered as part of the port's master planning process for the Chula Vista waterfront, he added.

Under Duke's lease, the North Carolina-based power company must make a good-faith effort to find a site off the state tidelands.

Bustamante said he prefers the replacement plant be inland, where it does not have to rely on San Diego Bay water for cooling. But, as a fallback position, he would support a replacement plant that is cooled by air on state tidelands in Chula Vista.

The San Diego Bay Council, a coalition of environmental groups, has long called for the replacement of the water-cooled plant with an air-cooled facility.

Laura Hunter of the Environmental Health Coalition said the plant uses more than 400 million gallons of South Bay water daily for cooling purposes. She said that the water gains heat as it passes through the plant, and that the hot discharge into the bay kills or harms marine life.

She said the plant also produces air pollution and degrades water quality by discharging chlorine, which is used to keep the plant's water pipes free of organisms.

Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Company. Used by Permission