Month: April 2012

How much will your property value drop?

Click on the map to enlarge

How much will your property value drop? It depends on how close you are to the power plant. Here is a report from UC Berkeley that concluded a 3-7% decline in property value within 2 miles of a power plant after construction: click here to read “The Effect of Power Plants on Local Housing Values and Rents”

Here is the math:
A $250K home could be worth $232K
A $200K home could be worth $186K
A $150K home could be worth $139K

Don’t expect the radius to be a cut off point. Home values will drop if you live outside the 2 mile radius.  Lower home values almost always impact their neighbors.

“But I Thought Natural Gas is Clean?!”

1. Natural gas is neither a short or long-term panacea or safe fuel for us in our neighborhoods or our future because it is still a fossil fuel that warms the earth and emits numerous dangerous by-products that cause cancer.*

2. Natural gas is an overestimated fuel that may only last for 20 years. The planners need to take into consideration that the financing of the power plant is probably not sound and will likely not outlast the plant’s usefulness; that the deconstruction of the plant if approved must include the cost of dismantling and returning to open space so that a few years from now we are not left with a rusting hulk of a plant in a toxic zone resulting from some billionaire’s polluted field of profit dreams.

3. The fracking process of extraction of natural gas from deep within the earth is becoming more and more dangerous because dangerous and cancer-causing and radioactive chemicals are added to the mix or released into the “natural gas” and will be burned in our neighborhood.

4. The continued acceleration of the fracking process will put downward pressure on the price of natural gas, thus lowering the cost to the applicant in the short run while further increasing the likelihood that the plant will be run full time to maximize its profitability.

5. The combination of lower cost of fuel and shortness of availability may insure that the plant will run full time to extract values as soon as possible.**

*For a detailed look at the applicant CoGentrix’ estimates of Quail Brush Generation Project emissions, related air quality standards, and health effects of the pollutants, download these pdfs, save to your desktop, and review:
1) Section 4.7
2) Appendix F

**Information for this post was inspired by Jeff Goodell’s Rolling Stone article “The Big Fracking Bubble”

Coming Fast – Urgent Action – Email by June 19th

We’ve learned that any letters sent to the Planning Commission prior to April 26th, must be re-sent by June 19th!   See our Email Activism page & act today!

 

Plan time off – Attend to defend!  City of SD Planning Commission Meeting – Thurs, Jun 28, 9 am  City Administration Building, 202 C Street, 12th flr (downtown San Diego).

Topic:  Initiation of a Community Plan amendment to allow the rezoning from residential to industrial to lay the legal framework to approve situating this power plant here.   If we succeed in getting the initiation to rezone denied or withdrawn, the power plant may not be sited there.

Parking is $17 at ACE parking lots, come early, take the trolley, or carpool.


Why Save Mission Trails? – by Patty Mooney

I admit it.  Mission Trails Regional Park is my backyard, and I do not want to see, hear or smell a power plant anywhere near this, the largest urban park in the USA.  Yet that is exactly what Sempra Energy and Cogentrix want to do.  They want to stick a grotesque conglomeration with 11 100-foot smokestacks and dozens of electrical towers right on top of Mission Trails where the “wild things” roam.  We’re talking about the home turf of Wile E Coyote and Road Runner.

Of course, as one of the unofficial custodians of this beautiful park, I must now let the world know what is going on in this corner of the planet, and why we must all be concerned about this.

It would be like plunking a power plant down on top of Yosemite or Zion or Central Park.  These are the places that people go for their emotional, physical and spiritual well being.  As Robert Redford said at the Yosemite National Park dedication in 1985, “I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security.  Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad.  Otherwise what is there to defend?”

I personally believe that Mission Trails Regional Park should have the protection status of our national parks, and that the last thing we, as a world community, should do is allow a bunch of greedy energy corporations to ruin paradise.  And that’s why I made this little video with the help of my husband: