Shut down Diablo before it shuts down SLO County 

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) used power, politics, money, deception, and every dirty trick in the book to build and open the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant (on an earthquake fault) over the protests of the citizens of San Luis Obispo County. Local elected officials who approved Diablo are to blame as well. Short-sighted stupidity, greed, and sleazy politics prevailed over common sense (as they so often do). Since then, we have been living with a ticking time bomb in our backyard with potential environmental consequences far beyond anything we have ever dealt with in this county.

It is heartbreaking to watch the suffering of the people of Japan in the wake of an earthquake, tsunami, and now the meltdown of a nuclear reactor. It is almost beyond imagination that such a thing could happen here, but that is the risk we live with daily. Common sense would now seem to indicate that the risk of potentially destroying SLO County is not offset by the benefit of boiling water with a nuclear reactor to power widgets and pump water in the Central Valley. Please, let’s shut it down in a controlled manner before it shuts us down.