PG&E to pay $5.9 million for dumping cooling system water from Diablo Canyon into ocean
PG&E will pay the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board $5.9 million in a landmark settlement that recognizes the long-term impacts of dumping water used to cool Diablo Canyon Power Plant back into the Pacific Ocean — but also the realities of a plant that is expected to close in the next decade.
According to a water board news release, the settlement money is earmarked for “water quality projects that benefit the region.”
“We take protecting water quality and marine habitat very seriously,” board chair Jean-Pierre Wolff said in the release, sent Monday. “This settlement demonstrates our commitment to safeguard and restore our region’s waters.”
The settlement was filed with San Luis Obispo Superior Court on May 25, following a water board investigation into alleged violations of Diablo Canyon’s permit to use water from the Pacific Ocean in its cooling system, according to the release.
Water from Diablo Cove is piped into the power plant to condense steam used in the reacting process before the water is then returned to the ocean.
Opponents of the plant’s process, known as once-through cooling, have long said that the water dumped back into Diablo Cove is significantly warmer than the water in the cove, which creates an artificial ecosystem and damages algae and small fish.
Biologists have also estimated that Diablo Canyon sucks in more than 1.5 billion fish larvae a year, most of which do not survive, according to previous Tribune reports.
Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board spokeswoman Ailene Voisin said the thermal discharge is about 20 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient ocean temperature in that area and that changes to the ecosystem within the discharge area “are well-documented and well-understood.”
For years, activists pushed for Diablo Canyon to upgrade its system to reduce the impacts within the discharge area, but those pushes were largely put aside after PG&E announced it planned to decommission the nuclear power plant beginning in 2024.
According to Voisin, the recent settlement recognizes the impacts of dumping warmer water back into the ocean, but also the fact that “there are no feasible technological alternatives or modifications that can be made to prevent the thermal discharges.”
Voisin added that annual reports and analysis of Diablo Cove and its vicinity of the power plant confirm that the biological changes from the discharge have stabilized over the years and are in general limited to only Diablo Cove.
She said the temperature of the discharged water is expected to remain the same through the plant’s full closure in 2025.
Voisin said there were no specific projects yet on the water board’s radar that would use the settlement funding.
“The board intends to apply the settlement funds toward high priority water quality projects in alignment with statewide priorities associated with environmental justice, public health, climate change, water supply resiliency or watershed functions that support healthy ecosystems,” Wolff said in the release.
The public will have a chance to weigh in on the funding implementation plan prior to its consideration by the board during a yet-to-be-scheduled public meeting, according to the release.
In addition to the $5.9 million settlement, PG&E has already been making annual payments to mitigate the impacts of its discharges and is expected to pay approximately $38 million in total for the plant’s operating years 2015 through 2025, according to the release.
This story was originally published June 23, 2021 at 12:52 PM.
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