Why S.F. needs a MUD SFBG News | Why S.F. needs a MUD | June 7, 2000 Editorial ITEM: TWO years ago a Pacific Gas and Electric mistake led to a massive blackout that caused 350,000 people in the Bay Area to lose power. Since then, the reliability of PG's system has only decreased – there were five blackouts in San Francisco in the month of March alone. Item: PG has made deep cuts in its maintenance and repair staffs to fatten the bottom line for shareholders in a deregulated marketplace. That has led to serious problems, like a deadly fire in the Sierra foothills caused by PG's failure to pay for adequate tree trimming over power lines. Item: In one of the most environmentally conscious areas of the country, PG generates 99 percent of its electricity from nonrenewable resources. Item: Under a deregulation law promoted by PG, San Francisco customers are paying soaring rates to cover the costs of PG's bad investments in nuclear power. Item: Cities in northern California that have public power (instead of PG) have lower rates, more reliable systems, and in some cases world-class programs promoting renewable energy. Item: San Francisco is the only city in the nation with a specific federal mandate to operate a public power system – and the residents and businesses in town are still forced to buy PG's ever more expensive, dirty, and unreliable power. There's something very wrong with this picture – and finally, after more than 75 years of scandal, San Franciscans now have a chance to change it. As Rachel Brahinsky reports on page 18, a grassroots coalition is circulating petitions in San Francisco and Brisbane that would place on the November ballot a plan to create a municipal utility district, or MUD. A San Francisco-Brisbane MUD would have the ability to compete in the deregulated energy market, replace PG's nuclear electricity with power obtained from renewable sources, and give residents of the two cities a voice in the future of local energy policies. It's hardly a radical idea: 17 areas in northern California have public power, including the cities of Alameda and Santa Clara and Sacramento County, which has operated a very successful MUD (called SMUD) for years. Almost every public power city has lower rates than PG. Most public power agencies generate a sizable revenue surplus every year, which they can turn over to their cities' general fund to pay for social programs. And many, like SMUD, have extensive programs to use and promote renewable energy. • • • San Francisco residents shouldn't have to circulate petitions to get rid of PG and get a shot at bringing public power into town. The city should have had a public power system long ago – and the fact that it doesn't represents a violation of federal law. The history is outlined in a story on page 23. In the early 1900s San Francisco badly needed a source of water to supply a growing city. So the city asked the federal government for permission to build a dam on the Tuolumne River, inside Yosemite National Park. Conservationists were outraged, and the bill would have gone down save for a compromise proposed by John Edward Raker, whose district included Yosemite. Raker was one of a sizable number of Western politicians and political activists who believed that the growing power of private utility companies was a serious threat and that essential services like water and electricity should never be controlled by private interests. So Raker suggested that the city be allowed to build the dam – on one condition: along with providing water, the dam had to be used to generate electric power, and that power had to be used to create a public power system in San Francisco. Congressional testimony made very clear that the intent of the bill was to prevent any private company – particularly PG – from getting a monopoly on power sales in northern California. The grant of the dam (which the supervisors voted to accept and the mayor signed) had very clear language: either the city established a public power system to compete with PG or the grant would be revoked and the dam would revert to federal ownership. In fact, in 1940 the Supreme Court confirmed in a clear and unequivocal decision that San Francisco had a legal responsibility to run a public power system. But PG bribed politicians, spent huge sums of money on newspaper ads, and ran expensive campaigns to defeat a series of bond measures that would have financed the construction of a city power infrastructure. Eventually the utility's influence became so pervasive at city hall that the issue disappeared from the progressive political agenda. (A detailed history of the Raker Act scandal can be found online.) • • • Since the 1970s modern San Francisco activists have tried repeatedly to enforce the Raker Act, but they've been blocked at every turn. The courts have ruled that only the U.S. secretary of the interior and the San Francisco city attorney can sue to enforce the law – and neither one has been interested and independent enough to do so since the 1940s. When the issue has come before the supervisors, PG's lobbyists (armed with big campaign contributions) have beat it back. So the only choice is a ballot measure taking advantage of a Progressive-era law that would allow San Francisco (along with Brisbane) to form a MUD. The process makes both political and policy sense: A MUD would have an independent elected board and would thus be accountable to the public. It would have the authority to pursue public power – but at whatever pace, and cost, makes sense. It might, for example, decide that the best way to avoid heavy costs is to build out a municipal power infrastructure one neighborhood at a time, using the revenue from the early customers to finance more construction. In the meantime, the MUD could begin operating as an independent power sales outlet, buying wholesale and selling retail (over PG's lines, as the law allows). It could undertake extensive studies of the city's future energy needs, and of conservation and environmental strategies, and develop an affordable long-term energy development plan. And none of this would be done in secret, since the MUD would be subject to the city's sunshine laws. The clearest sign of how beneficial to the public a MUD would be: PG is already gearing up for an all-out assault to prevent it. The lies and propaganda will be flooding the mail, the newspaper pages, and the airwaves before long. But don't buy the hype – Ralph Nader has endorsed the MUD, as has Sup. Tom Ammiano. And every activist group should make it clear that any candidate for supervisor who doesn't support the measure will be marked for political extinction. Petitions are in the streets today. Sign up and vote for the measure, and San Francisco's energy future will be in the hands of San Franciscans, for a change. Get involved To join the Coalition for Lower Utility Bills or to help gather signatures for the San Francisco-Brisbane MUD campaign, call Doug Comstock at (415) 386-4934. Check out the group's Web site at www.sfmud.org [http://www.sfmud.org] . Read about the MUD campaign in Davis at www.dmud.org [http://www.dmud.org] . Visit SMUD's Web site at www.smud.org [http://www.smud.org] , and learn about public power nationwide at the Web site of the American Public Power Association: www.appanet.org [http://www.appanet.org] . [http://www.sfbg.com/searchit.html]