RE: State roles in public participation

[Michael.Boyd.President, CARE <mike.boyd@aspect.com>]

CASE IN POINT - LETTER SENT TO EPA ON DOCKET

 The energy crisis has drastically changed, and will continue to drastically change California's electrical power market system that went into effect in 1996, commonly known as "deregulation" (which was actually a restructuring). One of the biggest contributing factors to the crisis is the manipulation of the 1996 model to allow gouging (primarily the raising of prices by withholding power during peak demand) of incredible magnitude and duration.  This manipulation, and its accompanying gouging was and is being made possible by inherent flaws rendering the existing market system completely unworkable and in dire, immediate need of drastic changes.  

	Vast, fundamental uncertainties are the essence of the ongoing energy crisis.  One of the leading uncertainties is the cost and availability of the natural gas needed to fuel new powerplants.  The only thing the energy crisis has made reasonably certain, particularly since attaining emergency status, is that California will never return to the 1996 market model.  It is also reasonably certain that whatever replacement market system California comes up with, it will be new and unique, with potentially significant impacts and mitigation measures that are also new and unique.

	In light of these fundamental uncertainties, it is simply impossible to determine with any kind of accuracy what kind of electrical power market system California will end up with once the crisis is under control. Given the magnitude of the California energy crises and the ramifications for California's consumers and the environment, CARE respectfully submits that good cause exists for granting CARE's request that the Department of Energy and the US EPA work closely with representative of CARE to develop an equitable strategy to address disparate impacts on communities-of-color and the environment resulting from the siting, construction and operation of new natural gas powerplants. 

CARE contends your unofficial policy is that the current race to expedite the siting, construction and operation of new natural gas powerplants is the main, if not the only, necessary cure for the totally unprecedented, ongoing energy crisis.  With the signing of executive orders, the energy crisis was declared an emergency by the Governor in January 2001. You are doing this with actual or constructive knowledge that primarily due to the unprecedented, ongoing energy crisis, there is not substantial evidence to support them, inducing public reliance on implied and express claims and assurances, which include that people residing and working nearest the project sites, the majority of whom are low income, families and peoples-of-color, will be safe from adverse, potentially significant health & safety, environmental and socioeconomic impacts. CARE contends that this policy is tantamount to "environmental apartheid".


Respectfully submitted,

 
Michael E. Boyd - President, CARE