OK, we were wrong.
Last time we wrote this column, we said that on Nov. 6 the California Coastal Commission was deciding if PG&E would get its permit to extend Diablo Canyon nuclear plant to 2030. This hasn’t happened, yet.
Action was almost—but not quite—taken. After a 10-hour commission meeting, the decision was postponed to Dec. 11. In the meantime, commission staff and PG&E are reworking the permit conditions because the commissioners were not happy with the initial proposal.
As you may recall, PG&E is applying for a coastal development permit for the plant’s extension. In the initially proposed mitigations, PG&E offered to preserve a small portion of the 12,000 acres of undeveloped coastal lands around the plant after its closure, leaving the majority of land without concrete protections—scant mitigation in comparison to the plant’s devastating marine impacts. State Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz) and Assemblymember Dawn Addis (D-Morro Bay), joined by multiple environmental groups and members of the public, called for all 12,000 acres of the Diablo Canyon lands to be protected. The commission agreed.
Several problems arose during the November meeting: The initial two-phase mitigation proposal required less than 10 percent of lands be conserved if the plant closes in 2030, and less than 20 percent of the land if the plant operates beyond 2030. It would take many decades to mitigate the impacts of either extension. This dependence on Diablo Canyon operating through 2045 is uncertain and far beyond the state-mandated 2030 closure. In short, the proposed mitigation was inadequate to begin with, and a large chunk of the minimal conservation may never happen.
PG&E brought an interesting excuse for why it can’t conserve all the land: The 5,000-acre section called South Ranch is owned by Eureka Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of PG&E. This provoked a dialogue between Coastal Commission Vice Chair Caryl Hart and PG&E executive Tom Jones. Jones argued that a conservation easement would present complications and extra expense because PG&E would have to pay Eureka the difference between the fair market value and the value of the land under an easement, so the easement should be postponed for whoever purchases the land.
Vice Chair Hart noted the intriguing idea that PG&E paying its own subsidiary constitutes an “extra expense.” She emphasized that “now is the time” for the conservation easement, so PG&E should find a way to do so.
It’s safe to assume that the timing and extent of the conservation easements are key points of discussion right now between PG&E and Coastal Commission staff. The commission needs to also include protections for Wild Cherry Canyon and hang tough on this point: All easements must be an enforceable condition of PG&E’s permit prior to any sale of the land. After more than 20 years of waiting, Diablo Lands conservation cannot be postponed any longer.
Let’s not forget, land conservation alone is not enough. Even if all 12,000 acres are conserved, it would take 34 years to indirectly mitigate five more years of environmental damage from the plant’s use of ocean water for its cooling system. However, this timeline could be reduced by adding a permit requirement to fund the restoration of coastal wetlands and estuaries that would directly mitigate the plant’s impacts on sea life. Per the Nature Conservancy’s Conservation Assessment of West Coast Estuaries, marine estuaries “often serve as wildlife ‘nurseries’ because they’re so conducive to supporting young life.” This important piece of Diablo’s mitigation cannot be dismissed.
A final decision is expected at the December commission meeting. We have urged the commission to require the maximum amount of land and marine conservation in compensation for Diablo’s ongoing impacts to coastal resources.
This is not the only Diablo permit in the works. The commission meeting is just three days after the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board’s public comment deadline for Diablo’s discharge permit.
At that Nov. 6 commission meeting, SLO County Supervisor and former PG&E employee Dawn Ortiz-Legg urged the commission to accept the smallest and cheapest amount of conservation PG&E offered. Later, she took a thinly veiled swipe at Sen. Laird and Assemblymember Addis, bemoaning “local state legislators [who] used their influence to suggest to the Coastal Commission that local control does not matter.”
She may wish to explain what she meant to the rather large group of SLO County residents who have asked for full conservation of the Diablo Canyon Lands for more than 20 years, including many local speakers at the November Coastal Commission, several dozen local organizations who helped draft the conservation framework for the Diablo Canyon Lands, the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel, and the 75 percent of SLO County voters, who passed the DREAM Initiative expressing residents’ desire to see all the Diablo Canyon lands conserved (which PG&E endorsed at the time; currently, not so much).
It seems pretty clear where the locals stand on conserving Diablo Canyon Lands. ∆
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 Dec 4-14, 2025.