Victories
Polluting Power Plant Stopped
Though in June 2007, the Board of Supervisors passed local legislation to run the City on clean, renewable electricity, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) stubbornly continued an eight year push to waste hundreds of millions of ratepayer and tax dollars to build a polluting natural gas power plant inside the City!
Worse yet, the plan was to site this plant on the very doorstep of the already heavily polluted and economically marginalized Bayview Hunters Point district, which is 40% African American, and has high concentrations of other people of color and low income residents.
From 2004, Our City led the grassroots outreach campaign to warn San Franciscans about the polluting plant and call on the Mayor and Board of Supervisors to reject it, and to instead pass clean power legislation.
When San Francisco's clean energy plan was indeed passed in 2007, making it clear that the power plant was not needed, Our City founded a coalition with Brightline Defense Project, Sierra Club, the San Francisco Green Party and over 20 other environmental and social justice organizations, to demand that the plant be canceled.
The many years of organizing paid off, and on July 22, 2008 the SFPUC voted to reverse its position and cancel the power plant. The Board of Supervisors quickly followed this action and directed the SFPUC to prepare for a power plant free future in San Francisco.