Southern California's need for electricity, combined with an abundance of land in the western reaches of Riverside County, has caused several power plants to sprout up in the Inland Empire over the past few years. Two of these plants are unique, not only in the region but in the state.

They were built without costly and unnecessary Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) that force builders to use only union workers and add 15 percent to the overall cost of power projects. Producers of clean power are standing up to greedy unions and saving consumers millions in the process.

There are many non-union construction firms active in the West with experience building plants. Organized labor, however, has maintained an aggressive campaign against them, dating back to before the Energy Crisis. Unions strong-arm PLAs by challenging builders' compliance with California's environmental laws-a strategy commonly known as "greenmail."

Working through an organization called California Unions for Reliable Energy (CURE), the unions have weighed in on nearly every power-plant project since the new millennium, threatening to tangle every one in endless environmental red tape and legal fees unless the developers agree to sign PLAs. The added costs are ultimately passed on to consumers in the form of higher electric bills.

The owners of the two Inland Empire projects in question, the City of Riverside and General Electric, rejected PLAs to save money. But the decision to build without the PLAs required the courage to oppose the unions and a watertight understanding of state and federal environmental laws. CURE's attempt against the Riverside Energy Resource Center got the most public attention.

Unions argued before the California Energy Commission, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and in federal court that the Riverside plant was environmentally unsound and should not be built. At each step, thanks to superb planning on the part of the city, authorities held that the unions "failed to substantiate any of their assertions with credible, accurate, or reliable facts."

The Riverside City Council approved the project in July of 2004 and it was completed in June 2006, without a costly PLA. General Electric, on schedule to complete its own PLA-free project in Romoland, achieved a similar outcome.

Seeking to demonstrate its most advanced technology for generating clean power, GE has taken every precaution to ensure an environmentally friendly project. This did not stop CURE from objecting to the plant. The unions teamed with others in the community who opposed the project by offering them financial and legal assistance.

CURE took its objections straight to court, arguing that GE's new turbines were dirtier than the old ones, and that work on the plant should stop immediately. The judge saw through the group's self-serving and erroneous claims and allowed the project to proceed as planned, denying an injunction to stop the work.

Both these cases demonstrate that power-plant builders are becoming increasingly sophisticated, not only in their ability to live within the confines of complex environmental laws, but also in their mastery of the regulatory and legal processes that have been exploited by their foes so effectively in the past.

By achieving power-plant construction without PLAs, the new approach being used by Riverside and General Electric will have positive long-term impacts for electricity consumers, taxpayers, and the environment. This provides an excellent example to other builders and other cities. And for delaying and blocking the availability of cleaner, cheaper energy in California, CURE has earned PRI's California Golden Fleece Award.

About PRI
For more than two decades, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) has championed individual liberty through free markets. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility.