Plan Adopted to Counter San Onofre N-Plant Harm : Environment: SCE will pay for destruction of sea life, but the controversy over the plant is unlikely to end.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  After 17 years of debate over the environmental impact of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, the California Coastal Commission finally adopted a plan Tuesday that commissioners acknowledged could mitigate, but not prevent, the plant’s destruction of tons of fish and kelp.

Working with data from a 15-year, $46-million study, the commission voted, 7 to 2, to require the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, to improve the plant’s fish protection systems, build a 300-acre artificial reef nearby and restore a 150-acre coastal wetland somewhere in Southern California.

“What we have crafted here is as specific and detailed an approach as we have ever recommended,” Peter M. Douglas, the commission’s embattled executive director, said Tuesday. “We do believe it is going to lead to a restored, functioning wetland and that remediation will occur.”

Edison officials, who already held a news conference last week to voice their support for the plan, were delighted by the vote.

“This is a good result for the people of California,” said Michael Hertel, Edison’s manager of environmental affairs, who estimated that the plan will cost Edison $30 million. “We are pleased. We’re on the track now of doing something positive about the problem--productive work, not just writing checks (to pay) for research.”

But environmental advocates, several of whom had addressed the commission during five hours of testimony Tuesday, were visibly disappointed. Instead of ending debate about the nuclear plant’s role, they predicted, the commission’s vote will cause more controversy.

“It’s essentially buying another lawsuit, this one against the Coastal Commission,” said Steve Crandall, a lawyer representing the Earth Island Institute, which filed suit in November against Edison because of its alleged violations of federal pollutant-discharge permits at San Onofre.

Crandall described the mitigation plan approved Tuesday as “guessing, maybes and what ifs,” saying the commission was using unproven remedies to fix “terrible” degradation, and that his organization will consider suing.

Rimmon C. Fay, one of three biologists on the Marine Review Committee, which conducted the 15-year study, agreed, calling the Coastal Commission’s vote a failure.

“The evidence was there. They ducked the issue and went to the cosmetic solution of wetlands, which are popular,” said Fay, who represented environmental interests on the panel. The commission’s plan, he said, will mean “the resident fishes can look forward to being sucked in and killed. What’s the balance? I fail to understand it.”

Released in September, 1989, the committee’s study found that the nuclear plant had caused a 60%, or 200-acre, reduction in the area covered by the San Onofre kelp bed. The study, which was funded by Edison, said the plant’s cooling system sucks up and kills 21 to 57 tons of fish and 4 billion eggs and larvae yearly, then discharges the debris-filled water into the ocean, reducing natural light on the ocean floor by as much as 16%.

Fay and Crandall were among many who advocated retrofitting the nuclear plant’s existing cooling apparatus with cooling towers, which use less sea water and which the Coastal Commission staff has acknowledged are “the only prevention technique that would result in essentially full marine resource protection.”

But, on Tuesday, a commission’s staff scientist testified that the towers themselves have negative side effects--among them, a substantial “salt fallout” when mist from the towers deposits salt on the surrounding land. In addition, some said that cooling towers would decrease the efficiency of the plant, causing Edison to rely more on fossil fuel-burning power plants that would further pollute the air.

Many commissioners, however, seemed largely swayed by a less alarming--but more noticeable--impact: the aesthetically unpleasant addition of 300-foot concrete cones on the coastline.

“Every time I think of cooling towers, I think of Three Mile Island. I’m not sure they’re in the best interests of anyone,” Commissioner Steve MacElvaine said before the vote.

Commissioner David Malcolm, a Chula Vista city councilman who represents San Diego County on the commission, said that, given the high price tag of the proposed cooling towers--from $1 billion to $2 billion--the proposed cooling towers would hurt Edison’s customers more than the utility itself.

“I feel that the gun is not being (pointed) at Edison, the bad guy, but at me, the ratepayer, the good guy,” he said. “The last thing I need to do is have my utility bill doubled because we’ve built ugly cooling towers. . . . To me, they’re out of the question.”

Commissioner John C. Hisserich, one of two who voted against the mitigation plan, said he thought the high cost of the cooling towers is “overstated.” He indicated that, if cooling towers are the best option, Edison should be required to install them, regardless of the price.

But Hisserich, too, had reservations.

“I don’t want to do something that will screw up the environment even more,” he said.

Commissioner Gary Giacomini, who also voted against the plan, had lobbied to include language that would allow the commission to impose further conditions on Edison if the mitigation measures fail.

He said that, only if such a clause were included, would Edison be “driven by the fact that, if it’s not successful, there’s going to be hell to pay--i.e. cooling towers.”

Commissioner Madelyn Glickfeld agreed, saying, “What we have here is a sketch for a mitigation plan that might work. We’re talking about an unsure experiment.”

Commissioners also heard from groups that restore wetlands for a living, who described it as, at best, an “inexact science.”

But six of nine commissioners disagreed, voting against the amendment.

“What the commission did today was dispose of that issue” of cooling towers, said Hertel, the Edison spokesman. But he added that the company is “on the hook” to report back to the commission every two years about the progress of the mitigation efforts.

Malcolm won commission support for his suggestion that the staff research a fish hatcheries program that could possibly be added to the mitigation plan approved Tuesday. He said only a hatchery would provide a “like-kind” replacement for the marine resources that are being lost.

“Our fisheries have been decimated,” he said, adding that he believes that has hurt some recreational fishermen who can’t afford more expensive types of relaxation. “The people that are being disserved are those people who can least afford to be disserved.”

Malcolm also lobbied for the restoration sites to be close to the plant, in San Diego or Orange counties.

“Where the impacts are created, that’s where the mitigation ought to be done first,” he said.

Among the potential wetland restoration sites under consideration are the Tijuana Estuary and the San Dieguito River Valley in San Diego County; Huntington Beach Wetland in Orange County; and the Los Cerritos Wetland and the Ballona Wetland in Los Angeles County. As part of the selection process, the Coastal Commission will hold further hearings in the coming months.