SAN FRANCISCO Chronicle reporter Jane Kay is trying her best to get into the Hall of Fame for Bad Reporting.

In 2007, she famously insisted on calling the pheromone spray designed to confuse light brown apple moths a “pesticide,” even though the spray didn’t even give the moths a headache. A pesticide, of course, is something that kills a pest, and a substance that confuses moths about the location of potential mates doesn’t come close to qualifying. Practically all the news media got this angle right, raising questions about the pheromone spray’s safety without unnecessarily frightening the public by making them think they were about to be doused with a deadly chemical. But not the Chronicle’s “Environment Writer.” Why bother with accuracy when there are tales of doom and gloom to spin?

This week, Jane Kay struck again, this time on the subject of power-plant cooling systems and their potential impacts on marine life.

Some power plants, you see, draw sea water through large pipes, use the chilly waters to absorb excess heat from boilers and turbines, and then discharge the (somewhat warmer) water to the ocean whence it came. Environmentalists have made up their minds this “once-through cooling” technology should no longer be used because they believe it damages the ocean, and insist that power plants build cooling towers to discharge excess heat into the atmosphere instead. A valid public debate is underway whether the benefit of building new cooling systems is worth the expense.

But Kay has already made up her mind about once-through cooling, it seems, and in her stories one side is presumed to be right (guess which!), while the other is depicted as being supported only by greedy businessmen and their lackeys in the Bush White House. And in her haste to push the environmentalists’ agenda, Kay doesn’t take the slightest care to get her facts right.

This is what she reported Jan. 14 about our local power plant in Moss Landing, which is owned by Dynegy, Inc., of Houston, Texas:

— “Coastal power plants [including Moss Landing] withdraw cold water and discharge hot water at a rate of about 16.7 billion gallons per day, according to reports.”

Fact: Even when operating at peak capacity, the Moss Landing power plant processes far less than 16.7 billion gallons of sea water per day, and increases its temperature by only about 20 degrees Fahrenheit before sending it back to the ocean. Since the water in Monterey Bay is usually around 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the increase of 20 degrees means the water is discharged at a temperature of about 70 degrees — which can hardly be called “hot.”

— “... the Moss Landing Power Plant takes and discharges water to the environmentally rich Elkhorn Slough on Monterey Bay.”

Fact: The Moss Landing power plant draws its water from the Moss Landing harbor, which is at the mouth of Elkhorn Slough. But it discharges its water about 600 feet offshore into the immense, cold waters of Monterey Bay. This error by the Chronicle is not trivial, because there is a huge difference, environmentally speaking, between sending millions of gallons of warm water into a coastal slough and sending them into the vast Pacific Ocean. The Moss Landing power plant does not discharge any cooling water into Elkhorn Slough.

We often have this reaction when reading a big city or national newspaper’s account of a local story: “What the heck are they talking about?”

Next time the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle send a reporter to Monterey County to cover an important local story, we urge them to provide some background from experienced local journalists. But they probably won’t want to, because when you’ve already made up your mind about what a story’s supposed to be, the facts can just get in the way.