Potrero Hill, San Francisco

From Steven Moss:

Wanted all of you who couldn’t make it or couldn’t stay through the very long day to know what the Water Board did. A motion to adopt their staff’s permit to pollute without change died for lack of a second. The following motion, passed on a 6-1 vote, changed their staff’s permit in four ways:

1. It finds that Potrero Unit 3 causes significant adverse impacts on the Bay: their staff’s proposed permit did not acknowledge any significant impact.

2. It states the Board’s intent to prohibit once-through cooling unless Mirant can prove it’s benign: the staff permit only stated the intent to study and figure out what to do later.

3. It makes the new permit expire December 31, 2008. The staff permit would have expired in June 2011.

4. It requires chronic toxicity monitoring of the discharge monthly: the staff’s proposed permit required this twice per year.

Which is to say. we won!

• One down, one to go [Guardian]