Urge the Coastal Commission to protect Diablo Canyon Lands — before it’s too late | Opinion

The Central Coast community has been talking about conserving -- and providing public access – to the Diablo Canyon Lands for over 25 years now.

As many know, the stunning, resource rich, coastal Diablo Canyon Lands stretch 12,000 acres and over 20 miles, and surround the Diablo Canyon Power Plant outside of Avila Beach.

Back in 2000, the residents of SLO County voted by overwhelming majority to protect the Diablo Canyon Lands (via the March 7, 2000, DREAM Initiative), and here we are in 2025, with an opportunity to finally do so.

How? By urging the California Coastal Commission at its meeting in Sacramento on Thursday, Nov. 6, to conserve and provide public access to all of those lands — the full 12,000 acres — as mitigation for the extended operation of the nuclear power plant as authorized under the 2022 Senate Bill 846.

Under SB 846, PG&E was authorized to extend Diablo Canyon’s operating life to 2030. Doing so, however, means five years of extended environmental impacts.

As stated in a Coastal Commission staff report, the plant’s use of ocean water for cooling the reactors sucks in and kills a huge amount of marine life. Termed “entrainment,” this affects about 14 square miles of nearshore habitat, the staff report says, and results in a “substantial annual loss of marine life productivity and public trust resources.”

State and federal law require that these impacts be mitigated, and the Coastal Commission concluded that land conservation (which protects the watershed and coast) is the “most feasible and likely to succeed” of the various mitigation measures available.

At its Nov. 6 meeting, the Coastal Commission will consider exactly what kind of mitigation it will require of PG&E to offset the impacts associated with Diablo Canyon’s five-year extension. For many reasons, we believe that, at a bare minimum, all 12,000 acres should be protected.

Specifically, we are urging protection (click here to read Sen. Laird’s letter to the Coastal Commission) of all units of the Diablo Canyon Lands via a conservation easement on all of North Ranch and South Ranch, as well as a right of first refusal to purchase (by a state agency or nonprofit conservation group) the land interests of Wild Cherry Canyon held by PG&E’s subsidiary.

Consistent with the Coastal Commission’s staff report, we are also advocating for the creation of public trails and an endowment that can adequately fund the operation and management of those trails well into the future.

This mitigation plan is not only supported by the detailed analysis of environmental impacts and mitigation contained in the Coastal Commission’s staff report, it is also consistent with decades of community advocacy calling for the full conservation of the Diablo Canyon Lands, including the following:

• The San Luis Obispo County DREAM Initiative, noted above

• The recommendations of the Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel in its Strategic Vision

• The Conservation Framework prepared after a collaborative process led by the Friends of the Diablo Canyon Lands

• A legislatively mandated plan prepared by the California Natural Resources Agency

We need your help. Please join the Coastal Commission meeting on Thursday, Nov. 6 (items 8 and 9) by Zoom, or if you can be in Sacramento, all the better.

Sign up to make a public comment by 5 p.m. Wednesday (www.coastal.ca.gov/meetings/request-testimony/thursday/).

This is our community, and this is our vision.

Please help us achieve the long-standing dream to conserve the Diablo Canyon Lands and make them broadly available for access by Central Coast residents and visitors, once and for all.

State Sen. John Laird represents most of San Luis Obispo County and Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey Counties. San Luis Obispo County Supervisor Bruce Gibson represents the North Coast.

This story was originally published November 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.