A Morning On The Bay

I stood on a rock listening to the sounds of the birds along the muddy banks as the smell of ocean coasted through the air on Bayfront Park.

Streaks of sun reflected down from the dull blue sky. The sound of the water slapping against the marsh was only broken in moments by fishing trucks driving along the road and planes roaring above. Dogs ran through grassy stretches while one man practiced Tai Chi along the water’s edge. People jogged and biked, boats launched, couples talked on benches. It was a morning removed from the hustle of life across the interstate. It was a momentary pause.

And across the wetland, guarded by a fence nearby and clouds above, the South Bay Power Plant stood. Silent yet pronounced, it stood there. It was impossible to ignore, easy to remember, and notable for a person making their first trip to the park.

I had to come here before I could really begin trying to talk about the issues that make up the situation. How could anyone approach tearing down a plant, cleaning up and putting in a stadium without actually seeing it from this perspective? Before you can talk about a power plant, you have to follow the power lines with your eyes coming down Interstate 5. Before you can talk about an environmentalist’s claims that a new stadium hurts local animals, you have to see a bird scrounging for brunch in the mud. Before you can talk to the County Department of Public Works about adding lanes, you have to hang a right at L St., park in the dirt and imagine if over 70,000 people could travel in and out of this place at that moment.

And that’s what it is about right now – the moment. That’s why it is so important to capture what those who make decisions both now and on a ballot have to say. What they think of now can change the way thousands used to think. Hearing a person one moment can change thousands more moments.

That’s why I keep promising to you that I’ll give you as many moments as I can if you keep giving me reasons to write them down.



A couple quick notes on that morning:

Even though I did not quote anyone on the existence of the South Bay Power Plant in a previous story, I could not find anyone who did not favor doing away with the 706-megawatt plant. One man called it “an eyesore” and that “getting rid of it is a good idea,” while another said he’d “love to see that plant go.” What wasn’t as clear was how they planned to compensate for the lack of emergency power. The plant is designated to power up to 500,000 Chula Vista homes in case of a power shortage. The battle for a new plant in South County existed before the stadium, and with the latest statements from the Public Utilities Commission, the battle isn’t settling down.

Traffic is another large concern. Interstate 5 and Bay Blvd. are the main vertical routes, and both connect to several smaller streets along the bayfront. The difficulty is that most of these streets run in single lanes – therefore, the quantity does not necessarily equal the quality. There is room for expansion along stretches of Bay Blvd, and space to add lanes on the bridges. However, the traffic situation will have to be revisited.

And as for the cleanup effort, the need stretches farther than what’s in the power plant. Driving through Bay Blvd., it was not hard to notice how much industrial work there is along the coastline. Placing anything as intense as a stadium requires the whole area to improve, and that includes making all of the bayfront impressive. Parts of the bay are far from that. Add that to the list of daunting tasks for the project.

And a quick note for the site: you’ve probably noticed the labels. Links are for pools of stuff to look at, headlines are for the “breaking news” angle, news is for the articles that I write, and feature is for the profiles and issues I write on.

Anything not making sense? Mail me.