Shutting down Scattergood is the right decision for Playa del Rey and leads the world toward a healthier future
By Tudor Popescu

L.A. will close Scattergood and other gas-fueled power plants by 2029
The author is a Playa del Rey resident and member of ProtectPlayaNow.org and Indivisible CA-43 (twitter.com/IndivisibleCA43).
For years I’ve ridden my bike along the beach from Playa going south, listening to the symphony of waves, beachgoers and seagulls, my eyes on the pavement, sand and sea. Rarely did I look at the Scattergood Power Station on my left. I never thought anything about it would ever change.
But now I do. On Feb. 12, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti acknowledged Scattergood’s impact on global warming. He decided to stop investing billions of dollars on updating its methane gas turbines. “This is what the Green
New Deal looks like at the local level” were his exact words, and I couldn’t agree more.
His decision makes perfect sense to me. There is an “undeniable link,” as Senior ABC News Meteorologist Rob Marciano put it, between climate change and the record-breaking California wildfires. I used to think of these fires as something that happens at a distance in national parks. Now fires burn as close to home as Malibu and alongside the 405.
What’s interesting is how the mayor now arrived at a decision that should have been obvious for a long time.
We’ve known from years of EPA reports that Scattergood produces more than 790,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas CO2 per year. We also know that the fossil fuel which powers the station, methane gas, is 86 times more potent than CO2. When this fossil fuel journeys from ground to incineration, we know it escapes at several points along the way. It escapes during extraction (think fracking).
We also know that it escapes as it moves through pipelines and when stored at underground methane storage facilities, such as the Playa del Rey gas storage field between Culver Boulevard and the bluffs. According to an analysis of an EPA Inventory Report, conducted by the environmental group Food & Water Watch, total escaping methane from the oil and gas industry that fuels these units — including fracking, pipelines and storage facilities like the one in Playa del Rey — is the leading human-caused source of methane pollution in the United States. Yet it took both local and national advocacy to convince the mayor of something that the environmental community always knew.
Why now? At a local level, it helped that a California law passed in the 1990s mandated a change to the seawater cooling system at the LADWP coastal power plants. At first, LADWP complied by shutting down and replacing turbines one by one until June 2017, when the board of commissioners decided to stop rebuilding until a study for alternatives could be completed. LADWP agreed to the study only after repeated demands by Food & Water Watch and its partners. This study played a key role because it revealed how using renewable energy is a viable alternative to methane gas.
But facts alone were not sufficient. Concerned community members and environmental groups had to show up consistently at neighborhood council meetings, DWP commission meetings, and at their city council offices. This advocacy led to articles in the media which spread the message that alternatives to fossil fuels exist.
At the same time that the environmental community voiced its concerns in L.A., 29-year-old newly elected New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to the youth-led Sunrise movement by introducing a Green New Deal resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives. This resolution brought national attention to addressing our climate crisis. Groups of concerned youth organized throughout the country, formed collectives (known as hubs), and started lobbying elected officials to endorse the Green New Deal resolution.
In other words, it became clear that the local desire for climate solutions is resonating throughout the nation. The mayor rightly decided to side with a solution that doesn’t use fossil fuels, putting Playa del Rey’s Scattergood Power Station on track to be one of the first installations that will get changed in the context of a Green New Deal.
I am very hopeful about this shift in policy because I grew up in this neighborhood hearing stories about oily mist covering my neighbors’ homes from the underground methane storage facility at the bottom of the bluffs. Now I am proud to know that my neighborhood will be one of the first places where we can reject the unnecessary and dangerous use of fossil fuels. It helps me sleep better to know that we are taking concrete steps toward reversing climate change, and that when my five-month-old son grows up there will be fewer droughts and raging wildfires. In Garcetti’s words, “This is the beginning of the end of natural gas in Los Angeles.”
Be proud, Playa del Rey, and encourage the mayor to continue on this path until L.A. is using 100% clean renewable energy and can be a model for the country and the world.
The seed change away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy is indeed a wonderful way to launch 2019. When LADWP officials stood next to Mayor Garcetti as he said, “this is the beginning of the end of natural gas in LA” was about the most hopeful I’ve ever felt about the climate crisis.
I couldn’t agree more with the author, and I join him in thanking Mayor Garcetti for his positive first steps. I will be very happy when the power plants around us will be powered by clean energy and the Gas Storage facility in Playa del Rey closed for good.
Kudos to the Argonaut for giving attention to this issue. Count the residents of Marina Del Rey and Playa among those who are eager to move towards solutions that do not rely on fossil fuels.
Awesome, no more electricity here! Fortunately at the coast we seldom need heat or ac…seems if we fill the dessert with solar panels all is well…unfortunately those that live there don’t exactly want that. Part of the equation also needs to be the environmental cost of both solar panels and the batteries needed to store the power. We actually need for the political discussion to give way to the technical one. Set the goals, and let the engineers figure out the practical solutions. Of course we all want to eliminate atmospheric warming…nuclear power anyone? I think the nuclear waste problem is more easily solved than atmospheric carbon…anyway, let’s solve this for our children, unlike social security! As I said, just give it to the engineers…
Bill Hart
Thank you Mayor Garcetti for taking this step. Thank you to all the community members who helped the Mayor reach the right decision. However, there is still much work to be done, Aliso Canyon continues to poison Angelenos, Playa del Rey storage facility still threatens hundreds of thousands of residents, an old oil/gas well blew out in Marina del Rey recently and the city has yet to pass the StandLA setback motion to all fossil fuel production in Los Angeles. This was a great first step in the right direction, but there is a long road ahead.
Glad to see that climate change is being taken seriously. What will happen to the current power plant? I hope it can be turned into something that will benefit the community.
We just spent $950 million upgrading Scattergiod. https://www.enr.com/blogs/12-california-views/post/16229-ladwp-breaks-ground-on-950-million-scattergood-power-plant-project So now we have to throw that away? Really?
Also, what will the Los Angeles sanitation department do with the 8 million cubic feet of methane that it generates everyday at the Hyperion sewage treatment plant, which have been sent to Scattergood? https://curatingla.com/cla/2017/02/09/sewage-treatment-los-angeles/
Come on John… don’t interrupt this leftist drum circle with legitimate questions! After all, surely it’s much better to release the 8 million cubic ft of methane and its 86x warming potency directly into the air rather leaking a tiny bit along the way to converting it to electricity and CO2. Right?
8 million cubic feet of methane are generated by Hyperion sewage treatment plant next door daily, which are turned into electricity at Scattergood. https://curatingla.com/cla/2017/02/09/sewage-treatment-los-angeles/
What’s the plan for that methane now?
Also, we just spent $950, 000,000 remodeling Scattergood. It is much more efficient now, and less of an environmental hazard. Do we want to throw away $959 million now? Why?
https://www.enr.com/blogs/12-california-views/post/16229-ladwp-breaks-ground-on-950-million-scattergood-power-plant-project
Crickets…