Court to Let State Rule on San Onofre : Environment: While allowing a lawsuit against the nuclear power plant to continue, a federal judge will wait for Coastal Commission and water board to resolve damage done by facility.

A federal judge in San Diego said Monday that it is up to state agencies to decide how to stop the San Onofre nuclear power plant from killing fish and kelp off the coast.

U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster denied the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the nuclear power plant, which is operated by the Rosemead-based Southern California Edison Co.

The injunction sought to force Edison to enact a timetable for ending the environmental damage that is purportedly caused by the plant’s cooling system.

However, Brewster also handed Edison a setback by denying the utility’s motion to stall proceedings in the environmental group’s lawsuit against Edison over the plant’s operation.

Brewster’s actions keep the lawsuit alive, but shift the burden to the state Coastal Commission and the Regional Water Quality Control Board to act first in finding ways to offset San Onofre’s damage.

“He wanted to hold the agencies’ feet to the fire,” Steve Crandall, the attorney for Earth Island, said after a brief court hearing.

The judge scheduled a status hearing on the case in six months and the matter could go to trial early next year unless the state resolves the issue, Crandall said.

Although Earth Island didn’t win an injunction, “we’re gratified the judge didn’t stay the case” like Edison wanted, he said. “He was allowing the case to go forward.”

David Lundin, an attorney for Edison, said the judge agreed with the utility’s contention that state agencies are responsible for reviewing the plant’s operation.

“He thought it was reasonable to let the state agencies proceed,” Lundin said. “These agencies have been reviewing the situation for 15 years and are about ready to make final conclusions.”

The time it has taken to stop the damage prompted Earth Island and other plaintiffs to file suit last November, claiming the nuclear power plant is violating federal law by killing tons of fish and kelp.

The action was filed a year after a 15-year, $46-million Coastal Commission-sponsored report concluded the plant sucks up and kills 21 to 57 tons of fish annually and had caused a 200-acre reduction in the kelp bed.

Environmentalists are angry that it has taken so long to remedy the problem, and the suit accuses government agencies of “bureaucratic lethargy” in purportedly failing to act on the report’s findings.

In a statement Monday, the plaintiffs again maintained that the plant’s discharge of heated ocean water--reportedly 2 million gallons per minute to cool the plant’s three reactors--has caused “widespread damage to the ocean ecology” near the plant.

Despite the study on marine loss, “foot-dragging agencies responsible for marine protection have not acted,” the statement continued.

Edison, which paid for the Coastal Commission’s report, has held there is no ecological disaster and that litigation is unnecessary because state agencies will act on a plan to offset the problem later this year.