Black Media Help Flip Old Power Plant Switch Off
New America Media, News Report, Julie Johnson, Posted: May 24, 2006
San Francisco – On May 23, 2006, Mayor Gavin Newsom and PG&E President Tom King flipped a symbolic human-sized plastic light switch off in front of a large crowd, celebrating the closure of the Hunters Point Power Plant. The ceremony was held outside under the silent and non-smoking stacks of the 77-year-old power plant.
"For the first time, I can look out and see no smoke coming out of the smoke stacks. I want to respect the fact that PG&E has kept its word," said James Bryant, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, a national organization of black trade unionists.
Bayview neighborhood residents began speaking out about the health problems they suffered and the smoke-spewing power plant in 1991, said Espanola Jackson, a longtime community activist. According to a 2000 survey by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, one in six children and one in 10 adults in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhoods have asthma, nearly double the rates of the rest of the city.
In 1998, PG&E entered an agreement with the City and County of San Francisco to close the power plant. Despite delays and doubts among community members that the closure would happen, the plant officially ceased operations on May 15, about five months after the original 2005 deadline.
Many cite Black media as key players in keeping the power plant and the health issues facing these predominantly black neighborhoods in the headlines.
In April 2006, when another closure deadline was missed, The San Francisco BayView Newspaper columnist Marie Harrison wrote an article outlining her attempts to get clear answers from PG&E on their plans and calling for community members to gather at the plant in protest.
Amelia Ashley Ward, publisher of The Sun Reporter said that's because African American newspapers serve as advocates for their communities. "When the community is concerned, they come to us first," said Ward.
Kevin Weston, who monitors black media for New America Media, said you can chronicle the entire course of the movement to close the power plant through archives of the San Francisco BayView Newspaper.
Robert Harris, PG&E Vice President of Environmental, Health, Safety & Technical Services, looked to newspapers serving the city's African American communities to gauge public opinion. "Some are geared towards young voices, some older voices, and together we heard all of those voices calling for the one goal of closing the power plant," said Harris.
The closure of the Hunters Point Power Plant may have set a precedent of corporate responsibility for the communities where they operate -- and for how community pressure can make the powers that be listen. Former San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, who spoke at the event, observed that the movement to close the plant energized the city like no other cause.
Speakers and audience members often did not agree on the process of how to close the plant, but the one thing everyone came to agree on over the past decades was that the 77-year-old plant should be closed.
"I can't think of another community activism [movement] that took so long and was so successful," said Arthur O'Donnell, an energy and environmental journalist for the Greenwire website and other environmental publications.
"When we started this project the chance that we would get together on an issue was slim to none," said Bryant. Residents of Bayview and nearby neighborhoods formed groups such as The Close It! Coalition to put pressure on PG&E to close the plant that sat just across the street from housing projects where mainly low-income African American and minority communities made their homes. The movement set a model of how communities can leverage their voices to make change happen.
"This day shows what can happen when companies are willing to work with the communities they are in," said Harris. The plant will be demolished and the land remediated to meet California EPA standards for residential use. A PG&E outdoor switchyard on an adjacent six acres will remain in operation and will undergo exterior beautification.
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