Dozen

State hearings began this week in Sacramento on what could bethe first of more than a dozen new natural gas-fired merchant powerplants built in California in the first years of the next century.A 500 MW, $300 million electric power plant in northern California,the Sutter Power Project sponsored by San Jose, CA-based Calpine,is expected to complete public hearings before the CaliforniaEnergy Commission (CEC) before Thanksgiving, gain a proposeddecision by late December and a final approval for construction inMarch 1999, according to Roger Johnson, CEC siting program manager.