Water Panel Muddies San Onofre Waters : Regulation: Ending its delays on a hearing about nuclear power plant pollution, the agency takes a bold step toward confusion.

More than 18 months ago, the Regional Water Quality Control Board announced that it would hold a hearing to decide whether to issue a cease-and-desist order to the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

The plant, said a board memorandum written in February, 1990, might have violated its federal pollutant discharge permit as many as 20 times. To help the board decide what to do about it, interested parties were asked to submit written testimony before an April, 1990, hearing.

But the hearing never happened. Saying it could not act until the state Coastal Commission completed its assessment of the power plant, the board postponed its hearing from April to August. Then, the board postponed it again--indefinitely.

So on Monday, when the board voted unanimously to finally hold a public hearing on Oct. 31 to decide whether the power plant has violated its permit, some people were less than impressed.

For one thing, instead of a formal cease-and-desist order hearing on specific violations, the board opted for a less critical forum--what Arthur L. Coe, the board’s executive director, called a “potential enforcement action hearing” that would give the board a chance to “weigh the evidence whether to consider a cease-and-desist order.”

If you find that confusing, you aren’t alone. After the board voted, even some board members seemed unsure about what they had done.

“It’s a hearing for renewal of their permit,” board chairman Charles Badger said, summing up--incorrectly--the public meeting that will take place this Halloween.

Officials at Southern California Edison, the plant’s operator, said they weren’t surprised by the scheduled hearing. Having long maintained that the plant does not violate its federal permit, Edison is ready to make that case in October, according to spokesman Steve Hansen.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, who have long fought to minimize the power plant’s effect on the ocean, lamented that the regional board, which has direct jurisdiction over federal permit violations, has taken this long to act.

Almost two years ago, a 15-year, $46-million study ordered by the Coastal Commission found that the nuclear plant is breaking federal law by killing off tons of fish and kelp each year.

Released in September, 1989, the study found that the plant had caused a 60%, or 20-acre, reduction in the area covered by the San Onofre kelp bed. The study also said 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 on the ocean floor by as much as 16%.

Since that study was made public, people like environmental lawyer Richard (Corky) Wharton have been trying to get the regional board to do something. In December, 1989, Wharton, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, dispatched two of his students to address the regional board.

The students pointed out that the plant’s federal permit specifies that water discharged into the ocean “shall be essentially free of . . . substances that significantly decrease the natural light” underwater. Further, the permit requires the discharge system to be designed to “maintain the indigenous marine life and a healthy and diverse marine community.” Edison officials deny violating their permit.

The students asked the regional board to revoke the nuclear plant’s permit until Edison reduces the amount of sea water sucked into and spewed out of the plant by cooling towers. Instead, the board said, it will wait for the Coastal Commission to act.

But the Coastal Commission, while conceding that the cooling towers are the only way to fully protect the ocean, decided against them.

In a mitigation plan approved last month, the commission decided that the towers were too expensive (their price tag is said to approach $2 billion) and that they might cause environmental damage to the surrounding land.

Instead, the commission called for Edison to make up for the continuing damage by improving its fish protection and warning systems, building a 300-acre artificial kelp reef and restoring a 150-acre coastal wetland somewhere in Southern California.

Now the regional and state water boards are the environmentalists’ last hope short of a lawsuit, Wharton said.

If the regional board refuses to act against the plant, opponents can appeal to the state Water Resources Control Board.

“Nobody else is going to stop (the plant’s environmental impact) from happening except the Water Quality Control Board,” he said. “The regional and the state boards are the last administrative agencies we can go to. That’s it. If they don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.”

But Wharton acknowledges being baffled by the way the board characterized the public hearing it scheduled Monday.

“A cease-and-desist hearing is what they set for April, 1990. Everybody has already submitted written testimony on this,” he said. “For them to say now that they’re going to have another hearing to decide whether to take any action. . . . Well, look at what they’ve done in the past--just dragging their feet and dragging their feet.”