I live south of Bernal and east of Monterey road. That puts me about 1 mile from the proposed Calpine power plant. I am opposed to the construction of this facility.

There are some who have said the tower will not be visible from there homes. It will be if you live on my side of Tulare Hill.

The information sent out by Calpine stated 250 new construction jobs will be created! Interesting but only temporary since those will go away after the facility is finished. Might these jobs be better put to use bring the older, less efficient, greater polluting generating facilities up to these newer standards?

20 to 30 full time employees will be needed once this facility is operational. This is very near sighted when compared to the 20,000 or so jobs that might be lost if Cisco does not put their campus in the area and potentially moves out of state.

No matter how you stack up the numbers, there will still be a significant amount of pollution belched into your local air by the power plant if it is built. There is no denying that by any parties involved.

One responded that we must look at the big picture, good idea.

One real question I have is the NEED for the power plant. A lot has been said about the pros and cons of building the facility but IS IT REALLY NEEDED? We have all seen the demand for electrical power increase in the past several years as silicon valley continues to expand and thousands move into the area but are we out of capacity or is Calpine just trying to cash in on the action?

I have seldom seen a significant number of the wind generation system in the Livermore hills constantly in use. What about the other sources that supply the local area. Are they running at maximum capacity?

We are the consumers of energy and we collectively can help the problem. Get actively involved and don�t just complain about the issues. Use less electricity! It�s that simple. PG&E will even help you do it. Turn those lights off that are not needed. Turn off or adjust settings for your heater and air conditioners to consume less energy. Use a manual can opener in lieu of the electric one, etc. There are literally hundreds of things each of us can do to reduce the demand. This applies to our work environments as well. Oh, it saves a lot of money as well!

If we are really worried about pollution in the air/water/noise, we need to get our act together before we attack the power industry. When was the last time anyone of us had a wood fire blazing in the fire place? Mowed the lawn with other than a manual push mower? Commuted with someone to work on a regular basis? Taken a long warm shower? Consolidated your shopping trips or shopped with a neighbor? Bought a SUV lately? Check out the pollution on those beasts. Had fun in the sun with a motorized boat or ski jet? All of these produce tremendous amounts of pollution per each individual use. Collectively they are catastrophic. What it boils down to is we can do more to prevent pollution ourselves than to eliminate the proposed Calpine facility. Oh, we need to do that also. . . It�s not needed if we choose that it is not needed. Keep up the demand for more power and it will be built. Here or somewhere else, but it will be built and it will pollute! The underlying question is: are we ready to sacrifice to make this not happen?

Let�s make our neighborhood and world more sustainable by demanding less!

Michael L.