Don’t let A-24 strip Morro Bay planners, officials of their expertise

I am writing to warn Morro Bay voters of the dangers hidden in the misleading language of Measure A-24. My authority for commenting on this ballot measure derives from having been trained in environmental and water-quality law enforcement while serving in the Coast Guard, receiving a master’s degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Oregon, and serving as a shoreline planner and environmental law administrator for various jurisdictions around the Puget Sound in Washington state.

The underlying purpose of Measure A-24 is to prevent development of the large-scale battery backup facility planned by Vistra Energy, the current owner of the property that the old Morro Bay power plant occupies. When a coalition of opponents calling themselves Citizens for Estero Bay Preservation realized that they couldn’t challenge this project directly, they came up with a less obvious measure intended to prevent any industrial projects from being built on the power plant site by requiring a new ballot measure to be approved by a majority of city voters before the city could change the property’s historical land use zoning of visitor-serving commercial to one of industrial needed for its future development.

While this citizen pre-approval requirement sounds innocent and reasonable at first glance, the devil lies hidden in the details. The land that the current power plant sits on is so polluted with toxic hydrocarbons from oil spills, the original owner PG&E has a land-use covenant restriction specifically forbidding the use of this property for commercial or recreational purposes. So, who do the Citizens for Estero Bay Preservation see as their imaginary white knight corporation who can ride in, spend billions of dollars cleaning up the entire site, tear down all the old plant’s contaminated infrastructure, and build some sort of commercial tourist development that would please the city, its voters, and the California Coastal Commission? Remember that Vistra has promised to pay for the safe removal of all the old power plant, including the three stacks, in order to tie their new battery system to the existing power grid. They will sell stored power back to the regional distribution companies for a handsome profit while providing the city of Morro Bay with about $9 million per year in sales taxes!

The state of California is actively moving to convert its energy production to carbon-free options, and a major piece of that plan requires battery backup facilities to store the wind and solar power during nights and calm weather. The earliest designs for these battery sites, now 10 to 20 years old, did employ big warehouse-sized buildings holding thousands of lithium batteries. Poorly researched stories have spread and raised unfounded fears about environmental dangers from lithium fires or the chemical fumes releases that might result (none ever have). However, the newest worldwide research in high-capacity batteries is producing several designs that don’t rely on lithium and can hold more energy in smaller batteries that use environmentally friendly materials.

By the time the several years pass required for Vistra to actually clear the site and get all of their permits, the battery systems they actually will then install will be so revolutionary that we won’t have to worry about any environmental or esthetic concerns. So please don’t strip our city’s planners and elected representatives of their land-use expertise by forcing all of us to have to learn all the contradictory issues affecting every imaginary commercial recreational request for this piece of industrial-only property.

Rusty Moore

Morro Bay

This article appears in Oct 10-20, 2024.