Report Detailing San Onofre Plant Failings Sits Idle

One year after a 15-year, $46-million study found that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is breaking federal law by killing off tons of fish and kelp, state regulatory agencies have taken no action on the findings, and environmentalists--including one of the study’s three authors--are crying foul.

“Somewhere along the line, justice is being delayed,” said Rimmon C. Fay, a biologist who represented environmentalists’ interests on the three-member Marine Review Committee, which released its study a year ago this week. “The present composition of the Coastal Commission is not one of great dedication toward the environment. The (state Regional Water Quality Control Board) has an outstanding record of neglect of enforcement of regulation. So nothing is being done.”

Richard (Corky) Wharton, an environmental lawyer who unsuccessfully challenged the nuclear plant’s license a decade ago, agreed.

“It’s been one year and they have done absolutely nothing but set the hearings back again and again,” said Wharton, now a professor at San Diego School of Law. “Nobody questions (that the study is) the most definitive report of its kind ever done. But there it is, and there it sits.”

The study, which was ordered by the California Coastal Commission, found that the nuclear plant had caused a 60%, or 200-acre, reduction in the area covered by the San Onofre kelp bed. It found that the plant’s cooling system sucks up and kills 21 to 57 tons of fish yearly, then discharges the debris-filled water into the ocean, reducing natural light levels on the ocean floor by as much as 16%.

These “substantial” adverse effects--while “not large-scale ecological disasters”--violate the plant’s federal pollutant-discharge permit, the study found. It recommended several ways to prevent or mitigate the damage, from upgrading the plant’s cooling system to building an artificial reef.

To date, the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, has not altered its operations, Edison officials confirmed. And spokesmen for the two state agencies that have the authority to force Edison to take action on the study’s recommendations acknowledge that they have been slow to evaluate them, repeatedly postponing hearings in order to focus on other pressing issues. But they say overwork--not oversight--is to blame for the delay.

“The truth of the matter is we haven’t had staff to do it--we should have a team of 10 scientists looking at this and we don’t. We didn’t have anybody working on it for a while,” said Susan M. Hansch, manager of the energy and ocean resources unit of the Coastal Commission. “The commission is definitely not dragging their feet. It’s the staff--we haven’t taken it to them. We couldn’t.”

The Coastal Commission created the Marine Review Committee in 1974 as a condition of its granting Edison a construction permit to expand from one reactor to three. The committee’s study, which was completely financed by Edison, was intended to provide an independent scientific review of the plant’s impact by appointing one biologist for each special interest: Edison, the environmentalists and the Coastal Commission.

Hansch said the commission is due to take up the study when it meets in San Diego in December. But that has led to the third postponement of a Water Quality Control Board hearing on the study; although the board is not required to by law, it has decided to wait for the Coastal Commission to evaluate the study.

“Our feeling was the Coastal Commission initiated the study and completed the study and they should take a position on it,” said John V. Foley, a board member and the general manager of the the Moulton Niguel Water District, which serves southern Orange County. “The real question is does the study really, truly document any violations. I don’t think we want to do their work first. And we don’t have a reason to believe anything yet.”

What that has meant, however, is that every time the Coastal Commission postpones action, so does the water board. Last December, two of Wharton’s law students asked the board to revoke the plant’s permit until Edison remedies the two reported permit violations. The board delayed taking action until April, then delayed it until August, and now has said it will wait until sometime in January.

“It’s kind of a joke; we’ve had so many tentative dates scheduled and they’ve all been postponed,” said Bruce Posthumus, a senior water resource control engineer for the board, adding that the board’s tentative January hearing is designed to follow the Coastal Commission’s December meeting. “That’s a ways away. Between now and then, who knows what will happen? I wouldn’t bet against it being postponed again.”

Edison spokesmen called the postponement “reasonable,” but rejected their critics’ contention that the company has exerted its influence to extend the delays.

“I don’t think this could be laid at our doorstep,” said Michael Hertel, Edison’s manager of environmental affairs. “It took (Fay) and his colleagues 13 or 14 years to come up with the report, and it’s obviously going to take the Coastal Commission some time to decide what should be done. To take a little bit of extra time on it to make sure they do the right thing is not only the prerogative but the duty of the commission.”

In the meantime, environmentalists say, the San Onofre kelp bed will pay the price.

“As long as that plant operates in its present mode, on a cumulative basis things are going to grow worse,” said Fay, who believes that even the final report to which he signed his name underestimates the extent of the damage. In order to get construction permits in 1974, Fay said, Edison “said, in effect, ‘If you provide us the evidence that something is wrong, we will do something about it.’ But nothing has happened. Nothing. Not even token action. It is frustrating.”