Artificial Kelp Reef Urged to Cut San Onofre Fish Kill

Nearly two years after a 15-year, $46-million study found that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is breaking federal law by killing tons of fish and kelp, the California Coastal Commission staff has recommended a solution.

In a 60-page report, which the commission will consider at a public hearing July 16, the staff rejected an option favored by environmentalists: the building of cooling towers to reduce the amount of sea water--and marine life--sucked into the plant.

Instead, the staff report called for the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, to lessen the damage by improving the plant’s fish protection systems, building a 300-acre artificial kelp reef and restoring a 150-acre coastal wetland somewhere in Southern California.

Edison officials, who put the price tag for such measures at about $30 million, said Tuesday they were pleased.

“Generally we support the recommendations,” said David M. Barron, an Edison spokesman. “Overall we believe the proposed measures provide a pretty positive and environmentally beneficial solution to the concerns raised” by the Marine Review Committee, the panel of three biologists that conducted the 15-year study.

Some environmentalists, meanwhile, said they were livid.

“The Coastal Commission staff doesn’t have the guts to go for cooling towers,” said Rimmon C. Fay, the biologist who represented environmental interests on the Marine Review Committee. He said the staff recommendations are “inappropriate, inadequate and don’t answer the basic question--the fact that the plant continues to operate and do the very damage that the MRC (study) documented.”

Released in September, 1989, the study found that the nuclear plant had caused a 60%, or 200-acre, reduction in the area covered by the San Onofre kelp bed. The study said the plant’s cooling system sucks up and kills at least 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 permits, according to the study. Edison has disputed that finding, claiming it is in compliance.

The Coastal Commission staff report, released this week, comes after a series of postponements that have stretched over 22 months. Because of staffing shortages and budget constraints, one commission staff member has acknowledged that when it came to evaluating the committee’s report, “We didn’t have anybody working on it for a while.”

As the nuclear plant continued to operate, the delays outraged environmentalists. Last November, the Earth Island Institute, seeing no action from the state agencies, filed suit against Edison, demanding that the company fix the plant’s cooling system or shut the plant.

A federal judge delayed action on that suit, however, until the Coastal Commission weighed in. The staff report, which purports to address the plant’s permit violations, was therefore eagerly awaited.

The report also recommends that the Coastal Commission ask the state Regional Water Quality Control Board to amend the nuclear plant’s permits. The proposed amendments would require more monitoring of the plant’s effects on fish, kelp and on the levels of light that reach the sea bottom.