We have great news for you: Several California legislators, including Kevin de Leon, CA Senate Pro Tem, have written a public letter in opposition of the Puente Power Project. Their endorsements are a big win for us and show that our campaign is moving in the right direction! Read their letter below. Please keep encouraging others to send e-comments to the CEC up to and beyond May 10 when the CEC is expected to announce their preliminary decision. It's not over yet! ------------------- February 22 ,2017 California Energy Commission 1516 Ninth Street, MS-12 Sacramento, CA 95814 CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE STATE CAPITOL SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA 95814 RE: California Energy Commission Evidentiary Hearing Regarding the Proposed Puente Power Project Dear Commissioners of the California Energy Commission: As members of the California State Legislature, we write to express our deep concern over the proposed siting of the Puente Power Project combustion turbine generator along the shoreline in Oxnard, California. As you know, this project stems from a determination made more than five years ago by the California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) that a facility capable of providing ancillary grid support was needed in order to meet projected load capacity requirements in this area of Ventura County. We recognize that, with the retirement of both the Ormond Beach and Mandalay facilities, sornething must be done to protect the region frorn temporary loss of the transmission corridor from the large Edison substation near Six Flags in Valencia to Moorpark; however, locating an additional fossil fuel plant in the coastal zone is not the answer. Over the intervening five years, we have witnessed a tremendous groMh of clean energy technologies and strategies to meet local grid reliability and resiliency needs, including demand response, conservation, and battery storage. These clean energy technologies and strategies may adequately meet CAISO's need projections for this area, but they have yet to be fully studied as a suitable alternative to the Puente Power Project. We strongly urge you to thoroughly study these and any other feasible alternatives that will align with California's renewable energy goals. We believe that any use of Puente to supply flexibility for renewable integration can be adequately supplied by existing facilities that are not located in disadvantaged communities and do not limit the public's coastal access. In fact, there is already a surplus of gas facilities capable of supplying that flexibility. The state has two large, relatively new and efficient plants - La Paloma south of Bakersfield and Sutter east of the Bay Area - that are sitting unused because there is no need for them. Constructing the Puente Power Project is not in line with the state's goal to move towards total carbon neutrality. As a state, we will continue to face mounting pressure to retire additional gas plants, especially as we move towards achieving the 509/o renewable portfolio standard (RPS) by 2030 policy that was signed into law by Governor Brown in 2015. We would also like to point out that Puente is a terrible misuse of coastal land. Although the project would occupy only three acres, two acres of protected coastal wetlands would have to be filled in and more than 50 acres of prime oceanfront property will have to remain encumbered in order to get it built. The California Coastal Act mandates that development shall not interfere with the public's right to access the beach, yet this project would be located in close proximity to McGrath State Beach, Mandalay State Beach, and the Santa Clara River Estuary. Not only would public access to this precious coastal region be hindered, the project construction will require the CEC to make a specific override finding under CEQA, since Puente is in conflict with the Oxnard General Plan. Recently, we have witnessed other California communities benefiting from two successfully implemented Edison Requests for Offers (RFO) - a resource pilot project in Orange County and the storage procurement that occurred to mitigate the closure of Aliso Canyon. Both projects have demonstrated the ability of battery storage, backed up by local solar and planned customer demand response, to quickly meet the need identified for Puente. Both ofthese projects have been successfully conducted at a fraction of the cost proposed for Puente without any combustion or resulting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. For these reasons, and because this project is not consistent with the City of Oxnard's General Plan, we urge you to pause and reevaluate the Puente Power Project before committing our communities and ratepayers to yet another coastal power plant that will be with us for decades to come. Sincerely, SENATOR HANNAH- BETH JACKSON Senate District 19 ASSEMBLYMAN MONIQUE LIMON Assembly District 37 SENATOR BEN ALLEN Senate District 26 SENATE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE, KEVIN DE LEON Senate District 24 SENATOR MIKE MCGUIRE Senate District 2 SENATOR SCOTT WIENER Senate District 1 1 SENATOR RICARDO LARA Senate District 33 SENATOR NANCY SKINNER Senate District 9