![]() “They’re part of the skyline,” Jones said. “You can’t turn the stacks into a money generator.”įrom his counter at the Azhiaziam (pronounced “As high as I am”) surf shop, owner Mike Jones sees the stacks just beyond his front door, and he sells stickers with their likeness. we’re not going to take on another asset that has no real economic value,” Collins said. “For a city that’s small like us, where we struggle to pave our streets and take care of our harbor. Tearing them down on the city’s dime would be $5 million to $10 million, Collins said. They stand on private property owned by Vistra Corp., which gave the city the option to keep the smokestacks up - if it took on liability costs and paid to maintain them.Īnnual costs would include inspections of up to $50,000 and maintenance of up to $30,000, and the city would have to pay more than $750,000 to place caps atop each one to protect their interiors. Last fall, the Morro Bay City Council voted to have the smokestacks torn down. “It’s a time warp when you walk in there,” he said. Morro Bay City Manager Scott Collins said it looks like a cross between the nuclear plant where Homer Simpson worked and something from the set of the TV series “Lost.” ![]() ![]() Residents have long been fighting for the plant to be demolished and the site made into a public park and for its wetlands to be restored. power plant on the waterfront has been slated for closure for years but recently had its operational life extended at least through the end of 2023 because of punishing heat waves and potential power shortfalls. In Redondo Beach, the gas-fired AES Corp. Last year, a 400-foot smokestack at the shuttered 1950s-era Encina Power Station in Carlsbad was torn down, over the objections of preservationists. What that transition means for huge, polluting structures has looked different up and down the coast. “They’re seeing the fires, they’re seeing the heat waves, they’re seeing all the associated weather events, and it’s forming too strong a pattern to be denied.” “People are finally starting to get it,” he said. And, in the case of underwater structures such as oil platforms off the coast, marine ecosystems have sprung up on and around them, and removal might be even more harmful, Pearse said.īut the energy transition, he said, is urgently needed because of climate change. ![]() Such decisions are complicated because the sites are often decades old and contaminated. ![]()
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