Scientists Dispute Lethal Effect of N-Plant’s Water on Sea Life

When marine biologist RimmonFay donned his scuba gear and first dived in the waters near San Onofre a decade ago, he found a rich blend of the ocean’s flora and fauna.

It was like a picture post card of a thriving undersea world. Dense forests of kelp swayed in the currents. Crowds of fish darted about. A potpourri of clams and other mollusks lay encrusted like gems on the cobble bottom.

But today, Fay says, that same patch of ocean floor is a virtual desert, stripped bare of its aquatic denizens. The culprit? Fay blames the San Onofre nuclear power plant, an imposing edifice of concrete and steel crouched atop the sandstone bluffs overlooking the Pacific.

Water used to cool the plant’s two big new reactors, first fired up in 1983 and 1984, and then discharged into the ocean, has spread a thick layer of silt over a 33-acre section of ocean bottom once dominated by a flourishing kelp bed, Fay says. In effect, the ecological balance of that submarine world has been turned topsy-turvy, he maintains.

The Company’s View

The veteran marine biologist’s opinions are by no means unanimous, however, and they have unleashed a scientific struggle dividing some of the best minds in the business.

Coastal experts from Southern California Edison Co., the utility that operates the sprawling nuclear power plant just south of San Clemente, contend Fay is dramatically overstating the impact of San Onofre on nearby ocean waters. They say there is no irrefutable proof that changes in the marine environment are associated with the plant’s operations, arguing that many of the effects may simply be the result of Mother Nature.

“Basically, it’s not a disaster out there,” said Byron Mechalas Edison’s manager of environmental research. “There are changes; there are things happening out there, but I would say they aren’t very severe. Most of the effects are lost in the noise of the natural environment out there.”

This clash represents the latest chapter in a decade-long scientific struggle over the question of what effect the power plant is having on undersea life.

The debate will ultimately land in the lap of the California Coastal Commission during 1988. Late in the year, the commission will consider the results of a scientific study by a special three-member committee--whose members include both Fay and Mechalas--that has monitored the ocean environment off San Onofre since Edison was granted a permit for the two new reactors in 1974.

Fay, who operates Pacific Bio-Marine Laboratories in Inglewood, is the environmentalist representative on the committee. Mechalas represents the utility. The third panel member, a representative of the commission, is UC Santa Barbara biologist William Murdoch, who generally sides with Mechalas.

The stakes are great. If the scientific committee concludes that the San Onofre nuclear power plant has harmed the near-shore waters, the commission could order the utility to take costly measures to compensate for any ecological damage, including modifications to the cooling system.

“The bottom line is, there has been an enormous loss of marine resources,” said Don May, Southern California representative of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. “Clearly, if Edison can’t comply with the law that said, ‘Thou shall not kill in the marine environment,’ they should at least be forced to pay for their misdeeds.”

Coastal Commission officials concede the issue will be heated.

Abuse of the Sea

“There’s no doubt we’re going to have a very challenging problem,” said Susan Hansch, manager of the commission’s energy and ocean resources unit. “We hope that the data will be such that, with an honest interpretation, we will know which direction we should go with possible mitigation measures.”

So far, Fay has found little common ground with other committee members. At times, the debate has gotten downright feisty.

Fay contends his counterparts on the panel, dubbed the Marine Review Committee, have been “derelict” in their duty to join him in reporting the environmental problems he believes have developed off San Onofre.

The scientist argues that the power plant has violated the state Ocean Plan and other regulations guarding against abuse of the sea. Fay has taken his gripes to the Coastal Commission, the state Water Resources Control Board and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board but has made virtually no headway.

Murdoch, the UC Santa Barbara biologist, was unavailable for comment because of a family emergency. But Edison’s Mechalas chafed at the allegations levied by Fay.

“I just don’t understand some of Dr. Fay’s claims,” Mechalas said. “We’re not supposed to be lawyers. We’re supposed to study the environment as scientists and report what we find to the Coastal Commission. And that’s what we’re doing.

“I think Fay is just an old-time environmental type, and he doesn’t like nuclear power plants,” Mechalas said. “He feels there ought to be a disaster out there, and he just can’t understand why we’re not finding it.”

Such sparring is not surprising given the genesis of the Marine Review Committee.

Origin of the Panel

The panel sprang from the tumultuous fight over Edison’s efforts to get permission to build the two 1,100-megawatt reactors during the energy crisis of the early 1970s. Although Edison had federal approval, the California Coastal Commission denied the plant an operating permit in 1973.

That denial by the fledgling regulatory agency prompted intense criticism by public officials ranging from then-Gov. Ronald Reagan to the San Clemente City Council.

Faced with the potent political backlash, the agency took up the issue again in early 1974, granting approval for the reactors with several stringent conditions.

Key among them was the creation of the Marine Review Committee, which was given a charter to study the marine environment and the plant’s impact upon it. Although funded by Edison, the group was made up of representatives of the utility, the commission and environmentalists.

During the next few years the committee initiated its review. In 1979, the group declared after reviewing the design of the plant’s cooling system--which draws in ocean water near shore through a mammoth pipe and then dumps it back in deeper water--that no environmental harm was anticipated. The Coastal Commission subsequently allowed construction at San Onofre to go forward.

Ecological Anomalies

In the years since the plant went into operation, however, the scientists have noticed several ecological anomalies in the ocean off San Onofre.

Although some species of marine life have flourished, others have showed marked declines, according to the Marine Review Committee’s most recent report, released by the Coastal Commission in May.

The most pronounced change came with the discovery in the fall of 1985 of a gooey, wave-resistant layer of sediment in 35 to 50 feet of water downstream from the power plant’s cooling water discharge lines. With a thickness of about three feet, the sediment layer has smothered marine life in the area and killed off much of the kelp.

Although the committee has yet to take a formal position on the cause of the sediment, Fay contends the stuff was probably drawn up by the cooling system, which circulates about 2 million gallons of seawater through the plant each minute, and dumped into deeper water, where it settled like cement on the bottom.

Fay says about 80% of the kelp bed has disappeared, apparently because of the sediment layer and the shadowing effect of the particles in the seawater.

To him, such an outcome is a profound ecological tragedy. Kelp beds are among the richest resources of the ocean. Often compared in complexity to a terrestrial rain forest, these groves of seaweed serve as a habitat and food source for numerous species.

Described as a Desert

“It’s gone,” Fay said. “Essentially, all of it has been impacted by this accumulation of sand. And that, to me, amounts to the creation of a desert.”

Edison’s Mechalas, however, argues that the kelp has actually grown in recent years, with new sections blossoming on the perimeter of the older bed.

“Right now, the kelp bed is probably as big or bigger than it has been in the last eight years,” Mechalas said. “There’s actually new kelp to the north of the diffuser pipes, and there’s even some growth on the pipes themselves.”

Another issue dividing the scientists has been the power plant’s effect on sand crabs. The tiny creatures are important as a sort of ecological signpost, revealing clues as to the overall health of other marine creatures.

Studies have indicated that crabs on beaches near the facility are smaller and less fertile than those on more distant spots. The Marine Review Committee has launched an investigation to determine if toxic metals and radioactive particles are a cause or if the crabs are historically less productive because of such factors as the size of the beach sand and the availability of food.

While Mechalas contends that “the environment off San Onofre just happens to be lousy for sand crabs,” Fay suggests that the nuclear plant may play a role. Moreover, Fay argues that the review committee has given “only token” consideration to effects on the ocean of radiation and metals produced by the plant.

The review panel, Fay said, “has concluded that there are inadequate amounts of radiation being released to cause demonstrative biological affects. I’m not comfortable with that. I don’t think we’ve studied that sufficiently.”

Mechalas counters that radiation is a federal issue best handled by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency licensed to monitor power plants in the United States. Nonetheless, he said that studies at San Onofre have indicated the plant is “far below operating specifications for radiation releases.”

Fay has also blasted Edison for its fish-return system, which is designed to scoop fish from the coolant pipes and shuttle them safely back to the sea. Instead, the creatures are returned to the ocean swimming backwards against the discharge current. Predators “line up at the discharge port and pick off the fish as they are forced out into the ocean,” Fay says.

The biologist also questions the validity of the studies since the two new reactors have been operating at 69% of capacity, a level below future expectations.

Mechalas and Murdoch, who made his views known in a report, argue that the operating level of the plant’s coolant system is a far more important factor. Thus far, San Onofre has averaged 75% of its pumping capacity, which is about the level expected over the long run.

Fay counters that the operating level of the nuclear reactors is indeed a vital piece to the scientific puzzle because of the potential compounding effects of additional radioactive particles or toxic metals produced while the plant is yielding more electricity.

‘Loss of Marine Life’

“If we’re seeing a loss of marine life at the lower levels of operation, the loss could be greater at higher levels,” he said.

Earlier this year, Fay wrote letters outlining his concerns to the state and regional water control boards. He received polite responses requesting that he address the local board directly, but the scientist said he did not have the time to make the trip to San Diego.

Art Coe, an engineer with the San Diego regional board, said the group looked at the San Onofre issue in the early 1980s.

At the time, the staff recommended that plant operators be ordered to make about $4 million in modifications to the cooling system. In addition, the staff tried to interest the board in studying the biological effects of the plant on the ocean, Coe said. But the regional board rejected the proposed modifications at the request of Edison and declined to initiate a biological study, he said.

During the coming weeks, the Marine Review Committee is expected to release a report that may clarify some outstanding issues and begin to point down the road toward possible measures Edison might be asked to take in order to compensate for any environmental damage.

As usual, Fay and Mechalas are on opposite extremes on the issue of environmental compensation. Mechalas contends that no measures are needed. Fay, meanwhile, favors such multimillion-dollar solutions as the construction of cooling towers to take over the chore of warding off heat from San Onofre’s big nuclear reactors.

Other measures being discussed are the construction of artificial reefs (which Fay contends are ineffective replacements for the real thing), a kelp restoration program and a shoreline fish hatchery.

In addition, Fay has suggested that a study of shortening or lengthening the offshore coolant lines might reap benefits, although such measures could have a detrimental effect on fish sucked into the lines.

Environmentalists like May of the Friends of the Earth say they are not expecting much. He said the political makeup of the Coastal Commission, which he claims has strayed further from its ecologists roots in recent years, makes it unlikely that big-ticket items such a cooling towers “are in the cards.”

Moreover, he said that the information provided by the Marine Review Committee’s majority, Mechalas and Murdoch, will not help. The results of the study have been swayed by Edison, he charged.

Fay agreed, saying: “The whole problem is that this is self-monitoring, and self-monitoring is designed to produce equivocal results. Even if it does produce results, those results are never examined.”

Mechalas rejected those allegations. Although the firm holds the purse strings to the study, which has cost about $40 million over the past 13 years, the funding is deposited in a trust from which the Marine Review Committee draws, he said. Moreover, the panel has its own staff, and each of the studies will be subject to comprehensive reviews by a pool of peers in the scientific community, Mechalas said.

“There’s just zero influence from Edison other than what I choose to exert, and I’m pretty independent,” Mechalas said.

Whatever the outcome, a court battle will likely result, May said. Environmentalists are not about to let the plant continue operating in its current status, he said.

“They’ve limited the options for future generations along that part of the coast,” May said. “We’re spending our children’s ecological inheritance.”