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Firm Tries To Fast Track Power Plant |
Natural-gas-fired operation
on grounds of Chino prison would be fully
operational within a year.
By DOUGLAS HABERMAN - DOUG.HABERMAN@LATIMES.COM
For a while there last year, CalWind Resources
Inc. was humming.
CHINO -- A private power company is seeking
fast-track approval from the state to build a
$100-million-plus, 180-megawatt
natural-gas-fired generating plant at the
California Institution for Men.
New Jersey-based Pegasus Power Partners' plant
at full capacity would supply electricity for
180,000 homes in California. Three of its four
turbines could be operating by the end of
September. The fourth would start up by the end
of March 2002.
A member of the California Energy Commission and
a commission project manager are scheduled to
join other interested parties on a bus tour of
the proposed Chino plant site Wednesday
afternoon. The officials will then conduct a
public informational hearing at Chino City Hall.
The five-member commission is scheduled to vote
on granting a license to Pegasus on May 30.
The Chino plant is one of only 10 projects that
have applied for fast-track approval after
Davis' call for 1,000 new megawatts of power
amid the state's energy crisis.
"These are very important plants," said Mary Ann
Costamagna, a spokeswoman for the California
Energy Commission.
The Pegasus project also needs approval from the
Southern California Air Quality Management
District. Chino officials plan to submit a list
to the California Energy Commission of ways to
protect future residential growth near the
prison, Chino City Manager Glen Rojas said.
Landscaping, air quality and noise are among the
issues the city will raise, he said.
"Nothing that can't be fixed," Rojas said.
Pegasus Power Partners LLC is part of Delta
Power Company LLC, which owns five small
gas-fired plants in California. It has had to
close four of them because Southern California
Edison owes the company tens of millions of
dollars.
Dean Vanech, president of Pegasus and Delta,
sounded optimistic Monday about the fast-track
approval process for the Chino project.
"There's an unprecedented level of cooperation
among the government agencies," he said.
Pegasus would lease about 15 acres from the
state within the prison's land east of Central
Avenue. The acreage includes an abandoned
nursery and open field.
"It's just surplus land," said Lt. Tom Padilla,
a California Institution for Men spokesman.
Aside from four 110-foot exhaust stacks, one for
each turbine, the plant would be no more than 50
feet high. Rojas said there are ways to hide or
disguise the stacks -- by planting trees, for
example.
According to the application Pegasus submitted
to the commission, the plant would include
state-of-the-art pollution control features.
Delta already owns a co-generating facility at
the prison site, which produced 27 megawatts
before the company shut it down. The company
sold most of that electricity to Southern
California Edison but also sold electricity and
steam heat to the prison, Vanech said.
Pegasus executives haven't decided yet to whom
they would sell the energy generated at the
Chino plant, he said. The firm is talking to the
state Department of Water Resources as well as
private power companies, he said. |
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