LADWP Clean Power Blowing in the Wind

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power spent millions in PR to promote its green power programs. Now, if only the clean generation could get built...

It was a public relations coup for Mayor James Hahn, standing in front of the Department of Water and Power on Feb. 3, 2003, with environmentalists to announce the city was going green and would nearly double its renewable energy production within 18 months by building a massive wind farm in the Mojave Desert.

Now, two years later, the project is two years behind schedule and critics cite the incident as one of the most blatant examples of the Hahn administration's abuse of the $3 million a year public relations contract that the DWP awarded to Fleishman-Hillard.

The firm, which has become swept up in local and federal criminal investigations of City Hall corruption, billed the DWP $62,526 to put together the Pine Tree Wind Farm event.