Diablo Canyon owes the public land conservation

For more than 40 years, Diablo Canyon Power Plant has conserved Central Coast landscapes and wildlife habitat (while simultaneously decimating the offshore marine environment). The plant is surrounded by 12,000 acres of prime coastal land owned by PG&E and its subsidiaries. Once the nuclear plant closes, this irreplaceable stretch of wild California coast will be swarmed by developers with visions of multimillion-dollar starter mansions dancing in their heads … unless the state of California steps up to protect the Diablo Canyon Lands right now.

As you read this (if you are reading it on Thursday, Nov. 6), the California Coastal Commission will be deliberating or has just completed deliberations on PG&E’s request to extend Diablo’s operations for five more years—or maybe 20 years. This meeting is our last guaranteed chance to protect the Diablo Canyon Lands for open space, habitat conservation, and public coastal access.

Specifically, the commission must determine how to mitigate the plant’s ongoing impacts to the marine environment. The commission staff report details Diablo’s intake of 2.5 billion gallons of seawater per day, along with several billion organisms per year, resulting in a “substantial annual loss of marine life productivity and of public trust resources”—which, as the commission once acknowledged, makes Diablo “California’s largest marine predator.”

Astonishingly, the latest commission staff mitigation recommendation is counter to more than 25 years of efforts to preserve the Diablo Canyon Lands. It recommends a conservation easement on as little as 1,100 acres of the 12,000 acres of Diablo Canyon Lands. The staff report admits this mitigation is “not sufficient to achieve consistency of the proposed project with the Coastal Act and … marine biological resource protection policies,” but that more than this amount “would be infeasible,” according to PG&E.

As the Sierra Club has pointed out to the commission, staff’s recommendation is a startling pivot, considering the public, local organizations, and the state have supported the most expansive protections for more than 25 years:

• San Luis Obispo County voters overwhelmingly supported protecting all 12,000 acres of Diablo Canyon lands for eventual conservation and public use when the county passed the Diablo Resources Advisory Measure, aka the DREAM Initiative, endorsed by PG&E, the SLO County supervisors, and local organizations.

• The conservation framework created by Friends of the Diablo Canyon Lands, comprising dozens of local organizations and community members, called for conservation of all 12,000 acres of the Diablo Canyon Lands and a public trail network.

• The conservation of all 12,000 acres is part of the Strategic Vision of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel.

• The California Natural Resources Agency calls for conservation of all 12,000 acres and dedication of public trails in its report, “Diablo Canyon Power Plant Land Conservation and Economic Development.”

• The California Coastal Conservancy received a $5 million grant of taxpayer funds from the state to create a conservation easement covering all 12,000 acres. But the Coastal Commission staff report recommended conservation of only 1,100 acres, less than 10 percent of the Diablo Canyon Lands. 

This is not a new issue. In December 2006, the Sierra Club and Mothers for Peace appealed PG&E’s coastal development permit to replace the plant’s failing steam generators. The Coastal Commission draft staff report on the project noted the same significant impacts to marine biological resources that they would cite in 2025, but recommended that “PG&E shall record an offer to dedicate for a conservation easement over approximately 9,130 acres … as mitigation for the steam generator replacement project’s adverse effects on marine biology and water quality.”

The Sierra Club has asked the commission how it could be that Diablo’s long-known environmental impacts warranted more than 9,000 acres of proposed mitigation in 2006, but now require less than 1,200 acres in 2025. That doesn’t add up.

The 2006 requirement of more that 9,000 acres of conserved land was shot down by then Coastal Commissioner Katcho Achadjian. In doing so, he cited the aforementioned DREAM Initiative as sufficient to conserve the Diablo Canyon Lands. He was incorrect. The DREAM Initiative was only intended to convey citizens’ wishes and did not carry the force of law. Clearly, it was not enough.

Without the maximum possible mitigation of the impacts of the plant’s continued operation, the commission should not issue the permit to PG&E. By the end of the day on Nov. 6, we will all know if the Coastal Commission has acted on the last chance to require PG&E to secure the permanent protection of all 12,000 acres of the Diablo Canyon Lands and a fully funded public trail network. 

In 1959, long before Diablo Cove’s coastal and marine life were sacrificed to industrial use, a survey by the National Park Service found that “this large, unspoiled area possesses excellent seashore values and should be acquired for public recreation and conservation of its natural resources.”

Now is the time for the California Coastal Commission to make this vision a reality. ∆

Gianna Patchen is chapter coordinator for the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club. Andrew Christie served as chapter director from 2004 to 2023. Send comments in response to letters@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Nov 6-16, 2025.