Morro Bay, CA - In the mid-1950s, the Morro Bay Power Plant was the biggest private construction project that San Luis Obispo County had seen since a guy named William Randolph Hearst built a hilltop mansion up the coast. The tax base provided by the power plant helped launch the city of Morro Bay and consolidate schools in the Morro Bay, Los Osos and San Luis Obispo region into the larger San Luis Coastal Unified School District. A July 7, 1955, Telegram-Tribune special section said the plant was estimated to provide enough power to light a city the size of San Francisco. The smoke stacks are 450 feet tall but there are an additional 68 feet of piles and concrete buried in the sand below to support them. Four decades after construction, PG&E sold the then 41-year-old plant to Duke Energy in November 1997 as part of a California state requirement to break up monopoly power generation. When the Morro Bay Power Plant was sold to Duke, it had an annual payroll of $7.5 million and paid $2.1 million in property taxes. Unfortunately, the four-decade-old plant was not economically competitive with more modern technology. In February 1999, Duke Power proposed knocking down one stack and replacing it with two shorter ones as part of a $225 million modernization. The proposal fizzled and the plant had various owners on its way to being decommissioned. Current site owner Vistra Corp. plans to turn the facility into a 600-megawatt battery storage plant. If constructed, it would be the largest such facility in the world. As part of its agreement with the city of Morro Bay, Vistra must tear down the Morro Bay Power Plant’s stacks and other structures by 2028, or pay the city $3 million. The City Council will have the authority to determine the fate of whether the stacks remain after consideration of community input, which will be a “community decision,” #Contrast #blackwhite #blackandwhitephotography #blackandwhitephoto #blackandwhite #bw #instablackandwhite #bnwbutnot #bnw_planet #bnwphoto #bnwcaptures #bnwmood #bnw_greatshots #bnwphotography #bnw #bnwlife #bnwsouls #bnw_zone #bnw_planet #bnw_society (at Morro Bay, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/Clt6wSgv3hK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=