About Us

This blog is run by Mike Toth and Rachel Henderson, residents of the Eden Gardens neighborhood in west Hayward, CA. It was originally started in early 2007 when we became aware of plans to site two power plants within a couple of miles from our home. At the time we were told that one plant, the Russell City Energy Center (RCEC, owned by Calpine), was already approved to be built, and a second plant, the Eastshore Energy Center (EEC, owned by Tierra), was starting the approval process. Therefore we focused our efforts on educating ourselves about the EEC plan and we set up this site to share what we learned and to educate the public about how they could get involved.

After attending many meetings and reading publicly-available documents, we became concerned about several aspects of the EEC plan, including its impact on human health and safety and environmental issues, particularly the impact on local air quality. Many other neighbors were also concerned and began to investigate, ask questions, and demand answers and action to protect our health, safety, environment, and quality of life. The grassroots efforts of people in the community increased the scrutiny on the EEC plan by government agencies, and ultimately the EEC was denied approval by the California Energy Commission in October 2008.

Meanwhile, as residents became more informed about power plants and the power plant approval process, some began to look more closely at the RCEC which had been approved with little to no input from the community a few years before. The RCEC also changed significant aspects of their plan after the initial approval, including a change in the site location and in the frequency of startups and shutdowns. Primarily through the efforts of resident Rob Simpson, in July 2008 the EPA revoked the RCEC’s air permit issued by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), because they found that the BAAQMD did not adequately inform and request input from residents about the project. This effectively halted the RCEC project and required the BAAQMD to go through the permitting process again, with proper opportunity for public input, before approval could be granted.

As of this writing in August 2009, the BAAQMD is developing a new permit for the RCEC and is taking public input on the proposed permit. As with the EEC, there are many concerns about the impact of the RCEC on the health, safety, environment and quality of life in our neighborhood. Our personal main concern about the RCEC is that the air quality impact analysis and subsequent pubic health analysis are based on the assumption that the plant will be operating in a steady-state mode of operation, while the permit actually allows the RCEC to start up and shut down as many times as they desire (effectively acting as a “peaker” power plant), which significantly increases the amount of pollution and toxins the plant produces. These potentially frequent startups could negatively affect the acute and long-term health of residents, yet the BAAQMD has not analyzed them in their proposed permit.

Please check the blog and links for more news, analysis, and information about these power plants and feel free to add additional information as comments.