By Bruce B. Brugmann
Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the veteran public power advocate, flashed the word from City Hall by email at ll:42 a.m. Tuesday, June l9.
“I just learned,” Mirkarimi wrote, “that the mayor is announcing a deal on tidal power today. I view this as a direct launch to derail or at least distract from community choice power. (PG@E has another poll in the filed on cca as of Sunday.) I’m going to try to blunt his move with the introduction of a tidal power ordinance so that we can hopefully
control the design protocol.”
Then, at ll:35 a.m. Tuesday, PG@E sent out a press release even before the press conference ended. It went out via the PR Newswire for Journalists and was titled “PG@E, San Francisco and Golden Gate Energy Combine efforts to explore Tidal Power Options in SF Bay.”
The head, lead, and text made the key point loud and clear: San Francisco, despite the public power mandates of the federal Raker Act, had once again caved in to PG&E and was allowing PG&E to fund and control a crucial study of tidal power for the city. PG&E was also calling the shots on the press announcement and doing it as a timely and telling part of its campaign to undermine the passage of community choice aggregation. The city, as Guardian readers know, is in violation of the Raker Act because it allows PG&E to control the city’s supply of cheap clean public power from its Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park.