WiLD Blog

This is the best article so far that connects the insane Sunrise Power Link proposed by SDG&E to the Costa Azul LNG Plant in Baja. This originally appeared in the Voice of San Diego.

The Sunrise PowerStink Project
Tuesday, October 31, 2006 9:58 AM PST
By Cory Briggs



I love KPBS, but I get nauseous every time I hear its announcers promote Sempra Energy and liquified natural gas (LNG). KPBS gives Sempra an air of credibility that it definitely does not deserve. Under pseudo regulation by the California Public Utilities Commission -- real regulation presupposes that the regulators are not beholden to the firms they regulate -- Sempra is working hard to screw ratepayers and the Earth...legally. It's an environmental/economic double-whammy. (Other energy companies are lock-step with Sempra in working over their ratepayers. I'm picking on Sempra today because it's a San Diego company that doesn't give a damn about what's in the best interests of San Diegans.)

To understand the double-whammy, first you must understand what Sempra has in store for us. It has built an LNG facility on what used to be a cherished surfing spot in Baja California, where even generous estimates don't show enough Mexican natural-gas demand to sustain the facility for at least 20 years.

So how does Sempra benefit in San Diego from LNG in Baja California? That's where the Sunrise PowerStink proposal comes into play. (I know it's called "PowerLink," but the project stinks so much that I'm taking some poetic license.) Sunrise is supposed to transmit electricity through the very beautiful Anza-Borrego State Park to San Diego from renewable energy sources in the Imperial Valley. Meanwhile -- and this is a key point -- Sunrise will also be connected to natural-gas-burning power plants outside California (e.g., in Arizona and Mexico).

Guess where the gas-burning power plants outside California are going to get their fuel? That's right! From Sempra's Baja California facility! Sempra is going to send its natural gas to those power plants through a pipeline from Baja California, and those power plants are going to burn the gas to make electricity that they will send (along with a little bit of renewable energy) to San Diego.

In sum, the Sunrise PowerStink project is a scam designed to help Sempra generate revenues to pay for an LNG facility in Baja California that otherwise could not pay for itself. You and I will have to pay for it through higher natural-gas rates and through enormous, potentially irreversible environmental destruction.

-- CORY BRIGGS

A big thanks to Fay Crevoshay and Aida Navarro and of course our gran amigo Jorge Campos for launching this spectacular campaign today in Acapulco with the heroic sea turtle defenders of Mexico. Serge 

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE 

Jorge Campos launches campaign to save marine turtles
 The Associated Press

Published: October 27, 2006
ACAPULCO, Mexico. Mexico's former star soccer player Jorge Campos, teaming up with environmentalists in this Pacific coast resort, launched a campaign Friday to protect Mexico's endangered marine turtles.
 
 Campos, who was the assitant coach for Mexico's 2006 World Cup team, called on President-elect Felipe Calderon, who takes office Dec. 1, to dedicate more resources to protect marine turtles along the coast of Guerrero state, where Acapulco is located.
 
 "Turtles are worth more alive than dead," he said, adding that the turtles could draw millions of tourists to the region.
 
 Mexico is a major nesting area for several species of sea turtles, which are protected by law. Harvesting or selling their eggs is a criminal offense, punishable by up to nine years in prison and fines.
 
 Still each year, officials seize thousands of turtle eggs at Mexican markets. The eggs are considered a delicacy.
 
 Fewer than 1,000 adult female leatherback turtles are left in Mexico's Pacific range, down from an estimated 70,000 to 90,000 in 1980, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

Revolutionary leader Subcomandante Marco met with WiLCDCOAST staffers Ben McCue and Fay Crevoshay recently to tour the Sempra-Shell LNG site at Costa Azul in northern Baja. 

Marcos was horrified that the Mexican government had allowed Sempra-Shell to destroy one of Mexico's most beautiful coastal sites with no benefit for the Mexican people. 

 Viva Marcos!!! 

And in the words of our good friend Borat, "Not so much Sempra-Shell." 

The Los Cabos area is the one of the most urricane vulnerable regions of North America. But you wouldn't know if from the incredible amount of flood prone development there. There  is a reason the Spanish created missions uphill from floodplains. The Los Cabos and Baja California Sur government by permitting so much bad development in so  many flood prone areas has increased the risk of flood damage  and the loss of life. Serge

TROPICAL Storm Paul lashed Mexico's Baja California peninsula with rain and winds today while high waves washed a US tourist from a beach resort.

The military, police and civil protection workers began evacuating some 1500 people from poor housing as the storm took aim at the Los Cabos resort, popular with foreign visitors for its golf courses, yachting and sports fishing.

A large wave swept away a US tourist from Washington state who was walking on the beach at Los Cabos.
"He is considered missing. It would be very difficult for him to be found alive," said firefighter Gabriel Garcia.

Paul faded to a tropical storm from a hurricane, with winds near 75km/h.
The storm was about 210km southwest of Los Cabos and was expected tomorrow to sweep close by the resort, made up of the towns of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo, before moving across the Sea of Cortez and hitting the mainland state of Sinaloa.

Authorities shut the Cabos San Lucas port, frustrating sports fishermen who converged on the resort this week for a major competition involving up to 200 boats. The resort escaped serious damage from two hurricanes earlier this year that veered away at the last moment.

Mexican residents of the Tierra y Libertad shantytown district followed the news, concerned the dried-up creek bed where they live could be drenched by flash floods as often before in storms. "It's scary," said resident Maria Mariano Reyes, who lives in a flimsy shack.

"Water comes in from both sides of the house and we're stuck in the middle," she said. Police drove around endangered areas asking people by loudspeakers to leave their homes and go to shelters.

We are very pleased that our good friends from Red Board Productions and Saticoy Productions will be back in Imperial Beach, filming John from Cincinnati, a show about a surfing family on the U.S.-Mexico border. Kem Nunn, one of California's best writers has teamed up with David Milch, creator and Executive Producer of HBO's Deadwood to produce the series. Serge

From: Daily Variety

Surf's up for Milch as HBO takes skein

Duo shore up link with 'John' show
By DENISE MARTIN
HBO and David Milch are back in business.

The network has greenlit 12 episodes of "John From Cincinnati," a surf noir family drama set in Southern California from the "Deadwood" creator-exec producer.

Production begins in November for a premiere next summer.

"John" revolves around the dysfunctional Yost clan of Imperial Beach: a former surf champ, his unhappy wife and their drug-addicted son Butchie. Their lives are turned upside down by both the titular John, a savant who mysteriously shows up in need of surfing lessons, and a man who returns to avenge a wrong done to him by the Yosts decades ago.

Bruce Greenwood, Rebecca De Mornay, Brian Van Holt, Austin Nichols and Matt Winston star along with Greyson Fletcher, Luis Guzman and Ed O'Neill.

Project began to take shape earlier this year, according to Milch. HBO was interested in a surf/beach setting as a backdrop for a series, while Milch had been toying with an idea for a new drama about a dysfunctional family.

Meanwhile, Kem Nunn, whose work has been focused on dark novels with a surfing motif, was working with Milch on "Deadwood." Between HBO executives and the writers, the idea for "John" was born.

"Kem had already written about the exact area 'John' is set, near the border between Mexico and the United States, an integral element to the story," Milch said. "I then met with the Fletchers and the idea kind of fleshed itself out afterward." He said there are only loose similarities between the real-life Fletcher family and the Yosts.

HBO entertainment president Carolyn Strauss said "John" is equal parts "surf series, family drama and David Milch show."

"David uses that age-old convention -- mysterious stranger comes to town -- to his own unique effect," Strauss said. Milch and Nunn wrote the pilot. Milch will exec produce with Mark Tinker, who directed the pilot, along with "Deadwood" executive producer Gregg Fienberg and Zvi Howard Rosenman.

Nunn, Peter Spears and Scott Stephens will co-exec produce the series. Herb and Didi Fletcher and Bill Clark are consulting producers.

A huge mahalo to the thousands of activist up and down the Pacific Coast from Baja to Oregon for using October 14th as a massive day of mobilization to protest the grotesque invasion of LNG terminals along the West Coast.

I spent the morning of the 14th in Tijuana at a conference with our anti-LNG allies in Mexico from the Border Power Plant Working Group and the Baja Coalition Committee Against LNGs. I told the crowd that it was crazy for the American government to wall off Mexico with giant border fences and then have Mexico give American companies like Sempra and Shell permission to destroy Mexico.

Hats off to our good friend Susan Jordan of the California Coastal Protection Network for arranging a massive LNG protest and paddle in Malibu with waterman Laird Hamilton and great Baja allies such as Pierce Brosnan.

Susan has been a great leader on LNG in California since the very beginning. A big Mahalo to Susan, Laird, Pierce and all of the paddlers, protesters and people of both Mexico and the U.S. for caring about the future of our coast.

The gas that comes from Shell oil operations at Sakhalin Island, one of the world's last refuges for the nearly extinct western population of western Pacific gray whales, is destined for California. Shell is also the co-operator of the Costa Azul LNG site in northern Baja that sits on top of Harry's, a former world class surf spot.

NEW YORK TIMES October 6, 2006 A Mix of Oil and Environmentalism By ANDREW E. KRAMER YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia — For more than a decade, Dmitri V. Lisitsyn waged a lonely, losing battle to protect the local salmon and gray whales from the world’s large oil companies, which are turning bucolic Sakhalin Island into an industrial hub for energy in Asia. Now, Mr. Lisitsyn suddenly has the full support of an unlikely environmental champion: the Russian government. The authorities, who had never shown any interest in Mr. Lisitsyn’s environmental causes in the past, have now taken them up as a means to stall giant projects by the oil companies Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil here on Sakhalin, a placid island near Siberia that is unfathomably rich with oil and gas. But the unusual tie-up is just the latest move in an intensifying face-off between the big oil companies and the Kremlin, which wants to recover — but pay very little — for energy assets it sold to foreigners when oil prices were low. T

The tanker is to take oil from one of the world’s newest energy provinces to Asia; some of the oil will also make its way to California, helping to diversify supply away from the Middle East, a goal of the Bush administration’s energy policy. In a choreographed show of official outrage over the environment unusual for Russia’s government, Oleg L. Mitvol, deputy director of the environmental watchdog agency Rosprirodnadzor, recently led journalists, diplomats and conservationists in a tour of Shell’s project. On the tour, Mr. Mitvol pointed angrily at a muddy hillside on Shell’s pipeline route. Pointing out upturned trees, he said he suspected pollution was behind the deaths of two fish he found belly-up in a stream, and he described how divers had shown him what he called a “mutant,” a starfish with three arms instead of the usual five.

At one point, as an aide casually flicked a cigarette butt into the Pacific Ocean, Mr. Mitvol stood on a fishing pier and denounced Shell’s intrusion in Aniva Bay. He said Shell’s operating company, Sakhalin Energy, was allowing erosion into salmon streams. He also accused the company of illegally dumping dredge material into a bay and cutting down trees in a park. “We signed a deal with the company to drill for oil and gas,” Mr. Mitvol said. “Cutting trees in a nature preserve is something else, excuse me.”

Mr. Mitvol, interviewed in a muddy field beside a pipeline, said Shell could face as much as $50 billion in fines and fees if it wanted to remain in Russia. He later said the figure was a rough estimate. He also threatened to “open a criminal case for every tree they cut down. “ Greenpeace, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and Sakhalin Environment Watch — Mr. Lisitsyn’s group — support Mr. Mitvol’s allegations, which they say echo complaints they have raised for years with little response from the government, until now.

If you wonder why WiLDCOAST has fought against LNG terminals along our coast, it is because not only of their destruction here (see our Harry's Video) but in other countries like Indonesia where oil companies ignore basic safety and environmental rules and destroy the environment and people's lives. And nothing happens to these global pirates.

New Indonesia Calamity: A Man-Made Mud Bath

From the New York Times By RAYMOND BONNER and MUKTITA SUHARTONO KEDUNGBENDO, Indonesia, Oct. 5 — It started as a natural gas well. It has become geysers of mud and water, and in a country plagued by earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis another calamity in the making, though this one is largely man-made. Eight villages are completely or partly submerged, with homes and more than 20 factories buried to the rooftops. Some 13,000 people have been evacuated. The four-lane highway west of here has been cut in two, as has the rail line, dealing a serious blow to the economy of this region in East Java, an area vital to the country’s economy. The muck has already inundated an area covering one and a half square miles. And it shows no signs of stopping.

The mud is rising by the hour, and now spewing forth at the rate of about 170,000 cubic yards a day, or about enough to cover Central Park. Foreign companies, environmental groups and political observers are now watching closely to see whether the government will hold the company that drilled the well accountable for the costs of the cleanup, which could easily reach $1 billion. The company is part of a conglomerate controlled by Aburizal Bakrie, a cabinet member and billionaire who was a major contributor to the campaign of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

The disaster occurred as the company, Lapindo Brantas, drilled thousands of feet to tap natural gas and used practices that geologists, mining engineers and Indonesian officials described as faulty. But as the liabilities have escalated, Lapindo was sold — for $2 — last month to an offshore company, owned by the Bakrie Group, and many fear it will declare bankruptcy, allowing its owners to walk away.

The Dempsey is going to rock!! Great waist high waves are forecast, the weather is shaping up, and we are stoked that we have over 110 participants ready for the event. Look forward to seeing everyone!! Mahalo, Serge