Ron's Log

KPSP Reporting on the DHS Medical Clinic

The TV crews show up at city meetings in DHS when there's a big crime story, or we're getting new police, or somebody's threatening to start a recall petition. So I was a little surprised that a reporter and photographer from KPSP Channel 2 showed up at Monday's City Council study session and then sat there through the whole meeting just so they could report the news on the future medical clinic. You can read their story and watch the video here.

This is wonderful (possibly unprecedented?) for a local station to actually do a fairly informative report on an issue that really matters to a lot of people in DHS that doesn't involve crime, violence or people yelling at the top of their lungs.

Sky Valley

Old Friends Seen At This Afternoon's Beer Bust

CVCC Buys A Third of Palmwood

A Press-Entrprise story that the Coachella Valley Conservation Commission has purchased 638 acres in the area that was to have been the 1,766 acre Palmwood project west of Desert Hot Springs. The CVCC paid $3.9 million which, the article says, is less than market value. They intend to buy more as funding becomes available.

That's What We're Talkin' About

I think the chill is finally off. Yesterday 109°, overnight low 83°.

Michael Jackson at the Salton Sea

The Desert Sun reports that Michael Jackson filmed his 1992 video "In The Closet" at the Salton Sea. Here is that video.

Looks like it could be the Salton Sea, although that Mission-style structure must have been built for this video. I've never seen anything like that around the Salton Sea...and it would be out of place, since the Spanish built no missions here.

Peaker Power Plant Pollution

Todd has expressed in his comments on my post about Riverside County questioning the funding for the Palm Drive/I-10 interchange his concern about air pollution from the future peaker power plant to be built near Desert Hot Springs and the city council's failure to speak to the subject. Perhaps he tries to excuse them when he says "The mental deficits in this city our many." Many, indeed. He says he speaks from facts, but he has provided none on this topic, suggesting that I go do my own research. So I did...or I did as much as my mental deficits would permit. I'm making this its own post since its connection to the interchange funding issue is fairly peripheral.

The peaker power plant will burn natural gas which is the cleanest burning fossil fuel. Being a brand new plant, it should have the latest technology to conform to California and federal environmental regulations. I haven't come across anything to say otherwise, and Todd hasn't suggested that either. By its nature, it probably won't burn as cleanly as a steady-burning natural gas power plant, but that is offset by the fact that it won't be running all the time.

So the plant will definitely pollute. Todd doesn't say how much pollution he would consider acceptable. If he considers NO pollution to be acceptable, then that may be why he hasn't got the support of the city council. Opposition to any increase at all in pollution without also opposing natural gas hookups at homes and businesses, increased numbers of motor vehicles, increased sales of equipment using two-cycle engines like lawnmowers, increased use of barbecues, etc. would be hypocritical. I'm sure there are people in California who would support an economic freeze like that, but very few elected officials.

But maybe Todd's opinion is that while some pollution would be acceptable, a peaker power plant would put way too much dangerous pollution into the air. So I Googled peaker power pollution. And I didn't find much of anything. Oh sure, I could find environmentalists who said they were opposed to the pollution, and citizens organizations that were afraid of the pollution, but I've not yet found any hard facts suggesting the plants pollute more than they are permitted, nor that the permitted amount is too high.

Here's some information from a Q & A about peaker plants in Illinois.

Q. What will be the health impact of a peaker power plant to people living around the facility?

A. The evaluations of new peaker power plants for which the Illinois EPA has received permit applications to date have indicated that the plants will not have a measurable impact on air quality. If a source does not have a measurable impact on air quality, there should not be a health impact. To confirm that proposed plants would not impact air quality, the Illinois EPA has been asking all peaker power plants to submit air quality modeling even though this is not expressly required by the rules for minor sources.

Q. These plants will emit almost all of their emissions over a small number of days during the summer. Why can't they be considered major sources under the federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) rules?

A. The proposed peaker power plants whose potential annual emissions are below the applicability thresholds of the federal PSD rules are not subject to PSD because the rules define "major sources" in terms of annual emissions from a proposed new source, not monthly or daily emissions. However, as noted above, the Illinois EPA is requiring applicants for "minor" peaker plants to perform air quality impact modeling as if the plants were subject to PSD. The Illinois EPA also has exercised its discretionary authority and is holding public comment periods for all proposed plants before taking final action on a permit. In addition, the Illinois EPA will continue to review the situation.

Some comparison info:

Natural gas burning peaker power stations pollute substantially less than coal-fired all-year round power plants. According to the Reliant company statistics, their 870 MW plant would release 248 tons of nitrogen oxides, 211 tons of carbon monoxide, 29 tons of particulate matter, and 3 tons of sulfur dioxide annually (with bulk of emissions concentrated around summer time). The company compares these emissions (e.g. 248 tons of nitrogen oxides) with cumulative emissions from residential furnaces: 1,745 tons, lawn mowers: 370 tons, commuter auto traffic: 1,040 tons of NOx, where the pollution has been integrated over 880,000 residents of the DuPage county. Information on the aerial spread of the pollution, and an increase in the concentration of toxic substances in the vicinity of the plant are hard to find.

Now here's a remark that starts to address the real issue, I think:

Which brings me to tonight's meeting and the discussion about peaker plants—because they are the most inefficient form of gas turbine application. They are such a poor application that we should be finding ways of shifting peak power to minimize their need.

IOW, power customers (us) need to change our behavior so that a peaker plant is simply unnecessary. That might mean changing the rate structures to discourage use at peak times; learning to get by with less air conditioning, fewer big-screen TVs, fewer swimming pools, etc. On a local level, it could mean making sure there are no unnecessary zoning or building codes that stand in the way of the installation of small-scale solar or wind at residences and businesses.

Here's an interesting comment from New Berlin, Wisconsin. It's not relevant to our local plant, AFAIK, but it does create a terrifying mental image.

How much of New Berlin and surrounding communities would be destroyed by an accidental explosion of the 210,000 pounds of liquid propane that will be stored on site as a backup fuel is anyone's guess.

This is from the Berkeley Daily Planet:

"These things are horrible," said Mike Thomas, a representative of Communities for a Better Environment who lives near San Francisco's Portero power plant, where three 52-megawatt peaker plants are running at full capacity because of the power crisis. "These peakers, they burn[,] like[,] jet fuel."

So, apparently, some peaker plants burn, like, high octane liquid fuel...which is not what ours will burn.

Todd compares the peaker plant to the proposed Green Path North, saying the peaker power plant is much worse. It's not a good comparison. No one (except maybe for a few) opposes running power lines from the geothermal plants down by the Salton Sea to Los Angeles. What people oppose is LADWP's insane scheme to run power lines across virgin desert wilderness rather than go down the already urbanized I-10 corridor. If there was a proposal to situate the peaker power plant on top of the hills near Indian and 62 (where Palmwood would have been) just because it was cheaper, then you'd have something comparable to Green Path North.

Maybe Todd's opposition is simply NIMBY (again, I'm just guessing, because he doesn't say it is). Perhaps a peaker plant in some other valley would be okay by Todd, just so long as it's not in relatively clean Coachella Valley. I'm generally not a NIMBY person, especially when I look at all the wasteful power consumption in this valley.

Sorry, this is the best I could do, considering my mental deficits.

Solar Roof Tile Test In Bermuda Dunes

A Desert Sun article about the installation of solar roof tiles on a house in Bermuda Dunes. The tiles are shaped like standard roof tiles, but are dark blue and generate electricity. One thing they will be checking is how much desert heat degrades the tiles. The article states that these tiles produce 10% more power, but the installation will have to cover twice as much area as flat panels would to produce the same amount of electricity. The two conflicting claims are not explained. The article also does not include an estimate of cost. The reporter, K Kaufman, added a comment explaining the information she had on hand and why she didn't include it in the article.

It's common in Desert Sun articles that obviously important questions are not addressed, but it's very rare for the reporter to explain why the info is missing. I'm no journalist (although I did hang out with quite a few J-School students at the University of Missouri, if that counts for anything), but I think when obviously important info is missing, the reporter is supposed to say something about it.

[Update: Here's good example of an article where the obvious question is left unaddressed. It's not a Desert Sun article, but the Daily Record from somewhere in New Jersey is a Gannett paper, so it's all part of the same ball of wax.

The article is about a Geek Squad employee using his Geek Squad badge to impersonate a police officer and sexually assault a woman. The article does not answer the obvious question: did he try to sell her a new motherboard?]

"We just want to make sure we're being fair."

At this late date Riverside County is asking CVAG to "re-look at the formula" for dividing up the cost for the reconstruction of five interchanges along I-10 in Coachella Valley. The additional cost to Desert Hot Springs for this little re-look would be $1.3 million. Obviously, the stories of Finance Director Jason Simpson's abilities have grown hugely as they've traveled over the hills to Riverside. Maybe he could find another $50,000, but unless he gets his own branch bank of the Federal Reserve, I think $1.3 million is out of the question. County Transportation Director Juan Perez says "It's not an attempt to pass along costs." Oh, no, it's nothing like that. Perish the thought. After the county created that last minute RDA in our area to-be-annexed, taking away potential sources of revenue for DHS, the idea to re-assess us for highway construction is just more fairness than we can take.

Bigge

Package number 1 of 3, packing inspected by a Mr. S.D. Son.

This new lid for a reactor at Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Arizona is sitting down on Dillon Road today, just west of Palm Drive. Here's the Desert Sun article about it. It's got 96 tires supporting the 150 ton lid. Not counting the weight of the vehicle itself, that's more than 1½ tons per tire. They do have several spares. Goes 5 MPH at night, but not for more than 10 hours. It's heading up route 62 to the high desert tonight, so if you've got nothing better to do, you could go hang out at Indian and 62 to watch it go by. I'm sure the citizens of Morongo Valley will be gathering at the top of the hill to see it struggle up. It might be as fascinating as watching barge traffic on the Mississippi River, which I used to do.

More photos here.