This undated print from our files shows the construction of the electric power plant in Morro Bay.
The towering smoke stacks are 450 feet tall.
According to HeritageShared.org construction on the first electric power generating unit in Morro Bay began in October 1953. California’s population was booming in the post World War II era and a former Navy training facility was converted to peacetime uses. Over the next decade the plant grew to four units with three 450 tall smoke stacks. (Two units share a smoke stack.) As an aesthetic consideration the outside of the plant was covered with metal sheeting, unlike the more industrial Moss Landing plant.
Monday May 15, 1961
Largest Steam CondenserFinished for Morro Bay
SUNNYVALE, Calif. — The largest steam condenser ever built at the Westinghouse Sunnyvale manufacturing division is shown here before shipment to Pacific Gas & Electric company’s Morro Bay electric generating plant. The apparatus is 24 feet high, 28 feet wide and 48 feet long. Insertion at the site of 10,342 aluminum brass tubes will bring the weight of the condenser and accessories to almost 1,000,000 pounds.In operation, 8,820,000 gallons of Pacific ocean water flowing through the 94 miles of tubing will cool and condense 1,420,000 pounds of spent steam an hour. The water resulting will be converted into steam again in a boiler to spin the rotors of a Westinghouse 330,000 kilowatt turbine generator.Workmen will separate the condenser into nine parts and load it at Sunnyvale aboard eight Southern Pacific railroad flatcars for Santa Margarita where it will be trucked the remaining 25 miles to Morro Bay.
The plant was a technological marvel when designed but today almost 60 years have passed.Tribune environment reporter David Sneed has covered many of the proposals for the site and offers these observations:
The future of the Morro Bay power plant is very uncertain. The antiquated plant is inefficient and operates at a fraction of historic levels. This bad news for Morro Bay because the city collects taxes based on the amount of natural gas the plant uses.
The owners of the plant have contracts to keep it operating at low levels for the next couple of years. After that, it will have to be rebuilt if it is to keep operating, a project that is expected to cost about $1 billion.
The fate of the plant is uncertain because the state is concentrating on renewable, non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power, such as the three solar plants proposed for the Carrizo Plain. Also, the plant’s once-through cooling system is damaging to the ocean environment and is unpopular with state regulators.
The plant can’t stay in its current form and the city of Morro Bay needs to plan for the future.
Environmental groups have floated a lot of wonderful dream ideas for the site (aquarium, performing arts center, park) without funding sources. Regulators balk at approving a new project with consequences to air and water quality. Power generators have the money to decommission the old plant but won’t commit unless they see a profit.
After decades of being in the same hands, deregulation has led to the site to changing owners every few years.
Here is an idea. As we can see from this article, a plant like this has a working life about as long as a human life.
Could we approve a new facility that has sunset clause with funding built in?
The utility owner would be responsible for paying a bond each year that would be applied to building what the community wanted (aquarium, theater, natural history museum, revolving restaurant atop the smoke stacks). Fail to pay, forfeit the concession.The utility owner would also be responsible for paying into an environmental mitigation fund that would offset the damage the plant generated and to decommission the site to clean bare ground at the time of sunset.
A few years back one of our reporters wrote a story about the Los Osos Chamber of Commerce. They had produced a brochure that pasted a photo over one of their major sponsors, PG&E. The full page picture of Morro Bay, sandspit and Rock had an inset photo of a seagull pasted over the place where the power plant’s smoke stacks stood.Idon’t blame them,
I’d like to see the smoke stacks removed in my lifetime.
The community needs to set a goal and come up with a way to get there from here.
Related posts:
The picture of the construction site of the
PG&E plant in Morro Bay.Among the cars parked
there at the site was a VW (bug).In the 1960′s,
folks like myself,loved the Bug.It saved gas,&
got you from point A to point B,cheaply.GM & the other big car makers laughed at us and called us unAmerican.Well the last laugh is on
them.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this smokestack!”
The thing is an eyesore. Yet, ironically, it has become a part of the Morro Bay skyline, if you will: Rock, tri-stacks.
When it was put to work more, the water near the Rock would sometimes be unusually warm, from where they pumped warmed water from the plant. Suposedly harmless but still creepy.
Just found a front page with an image made a short time after this stage of construction dated Jan. 6, 1962. Part of a future blog post.
Yup, it’s an eyesore. When I was in Morro Bay in May I mentioned to a shopkeeper how ugly it is…ruins the whole view of the area where the Rock is. He said “oddly enough, they were going to tear it down but Morro Bay citizens think it’s a landmark.” People of Morro Bay, what is WRONG with you?
Sorry Nancy, there is nothing wrong with the people of Morro Bay. For all its failings and problems, and make no mistake there are many, the plant is a landmark for a lot of us, just as the rock is. For myself, it is the reason I was able to enjoy my childhood in the greatest little town in the world. My parents moved to Morro Bay in 1953 so that my father could help build it. They stayed there for the rest of their lives. While I didnt, the town is still “home” to me, and every time we go back for a visit, I know Im almost home when I can see the tops of the stacks just above the hill as we near the place. I know thats not easy to understand, but it is what it is.
This was not on any website when I searched the area! When I came over the rise and saw that view? I was like what the heck is that ?! Some cold war antique? The east coast doesn’t even have anything like that! Tear it down get rid of destroy it! Want power? Use the freaking ocean like Tesla proposed 100 years ago. Forget the jobs! People adapt! Tourism is your strong suit go with that. People will move and find other places to live, really. Reading the other comments about how people built it, and they had jobs, and they had a warm loving childhood because of it is all and good, but let’s make new memories people, do not dwell on the past move forward, adapt and overcome. I thought California was more progressive than this. And what’s up with all the prisons? “Here is a beautiful town, and right next to it…. A prison. You have hundreds if not 1000s of acres of uninhabitable land put them there! Anyway smoke stacks…old, antiquated, time to go.
If you all really want to know they have been flushing asbestos out to sea for years and the smoke stacks are Missile Silos. There are animal testing and other medical testing being done here out of site from the people. If you have stayed in Morro Bay then you have been exposed to MTY-03 Virus. God Help Us all
The only information I have read about the power plant is that the Smoking Stacks are coming down soon and that one of them is inoperable as the workers have shut it down. The 58 year old apparatuses have outlived there original purpose. And we area residents have been asked to add solar power to our homes so when the Morro Bay Towers are removed we will not have to wait for Diablo Canyon to facilitate us.
Unfortunately, where ever you relocate on this planet you will find similar projects that are Gamma Ray propelled such as the Dopplars, electro magnetic field transmissions from Cell Phone Towers, and Transmitter Poles that have an enormous amounts of EMF’s from RF’s audio radio added to the level of what humanity is supposed to be subject too on a daily basis. And in one article that I have read more than one person believes that there very well could be attached sub staion transmitters to the cell phone towers that are using spy tech devices on neighborhoods. Examples would be simultaneous telephone calls indicating what you normally do on a given day and what you purchase at stores solicitation calls etc…. This one article that I read seems reads a bit far fetched but never the less. Using radio spy tech is usually done through the local sheriff’s department and if they stalk people for inadequate reasons there are agencies that you can contact. However being paranoid and living in a World that has issues with other Countries has always been first on the agenda for the higher level Government to have free right to utilize in order to secure our nation. Harassing citizens at Peace Time, and having your own Government build a project 200 feet from your front door in a residential area and exposing your family to radiation, EMF’s above level, and following them everywhere, keeping them unemployed, ruining their ability to seek medical services etc… That is another whole ball game.
But as for the Stacks as soon as they dismember them the sea life in the area will be edible in about 100 years. The towers suck in hundreds of thousand of small fish and crustaceans every pull of 8 thousand tons of water in an hour.
It is hard to pin point an agency and make them responsible for asbestos contamination, EMF over exposure, and Gamma Ray cell deterioration, but if your family had no pre disposed conditions of muscle or nerve disorders before residing near to a facility and the GOV. did a testing on the local residents they could come to a scientific research of all elements in the equation = of longevity of a humans life vs. a human who resides in lets say Isla Mujeres where their are no communication satellites or energy towers at the same age. There is a lot of future endeavors that are not tested first or given a scientific conclusion on. Therefore, the after effect would be beneficial rather than leave another undisclosed non discriminatory halocaust on human lives.
We are merely born to be sent to guinea pig heaven.