This whole PG&E permit is not making any sense; I don’t believe for one minute that the California Coastal Commission, State Water Resources Control Board, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) are working in our best interest and with an abundance of caution as their top priority.
First of all, you don’t do business with convicted felons and career criminals and expect that no one is going to get hurt and everything is going to be fine, just fine. Second, sacrificing 10 billion larval fish without any regard for what that means to our environment and quality of life speaks directly to the honesty and integrity of these agencies. What we do to nature we do to ourselves. We are nature. They don’t get it. That’s a problem.
I can’t help but feel that we are as unimportant as the fish to these regulators. Treating nature with such reckless disregard shows me nature is of no consequence to these agencies. Like the fish, we are collateral damage and disposable. A write-off. Not important.
I asked the Coastal Commission, water board, and NRC if PG&E’s plan for Diablo Canyon Power Plant was fail-safe. Fair question. We don’t want to be another Fukushima. I got no response. No one would commit to our safety. No promises. No guarantees. No assurances.
I can’t trust this careless attitude, and that makes this whole operation undoable. This is a fraud, signed, sealed, and delivered by our elected officials who are aiding and abetting convicted felons. This is not about us or this community. This is about gangster mentality helping each other.
If all the rules and regulations were enforced and our legislators and elected officials had this community’s best interest at heart and $1.2 billion-plus in state and federal grant money wasn’t on the line and exemptions and immunity were not part of the deal, this would never have gotten to first base.
And I can’t believe a good reason to keep Diablo open is so that 3,000 employees don’t lose their jobs. This is on PG&E, not us. They owe their employees severance pay.
Trust is a major component to a good agreement where everyone benefits. There is no trust here. We really need some accountability, and that’s not happening either. Prove that Diablo’s safe and all the codes, rules, and regulations are in order. There is a lot at stake here. This is our home. The burden of proof is on PG&E, and we are saying: No proof, no deal. Simple. ∆
Jean’ne Blackwell writes to New Times from San Luis Obispo. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Dec 25, 2025 – Jan 1, 2026.