By Neil Farrell ~
With the announcement that the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant will close in 2025, a bill to study the economic effects of that closure on San Luis Obispo County would seem to be either perfect timing or perhaps a moot point.
Either way, Senate Bill 968, authored by Dist. 17 Sen. Bill Monning, continues to wend its way through the legislative labyrinth, with starts and stops just making its way through the Senate.
SB 968 was introduced last February and won unanimous approval in the Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications Committee at the end of March. But it got stuffed into the “suspense file” of the Senate Committee on Appropriations over concerns about who would pay for the study. The bill is dependent on the Public Utilities Commission authorizing PG&E to pay, and of course pass it on to ratepayers.
On June 1, the full Senate approved SB 968 on a vote of 36-0 and it was then sent on to the Assembly Committee on Utilities and Commerce for a vote. If it passed the U&C Committee, it would then go to the Assembly Appropriations Committee for approval, then on to the full Assembly for a vote.
If the Assembly passes it, without making changes, it would then go to Gov. Jerry Brown for final approval. If changes are made, the bill would be sent back to the Senate for a vote on the changes before going to the Governor.
In a somewhat future prediction, long-time plant opponents agreed with the need for the economic study. Back in March, Rochelle Becker, executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility said, “Senator Monning is to be commended for his leadership in authoring this legislation. In the past few years, we have seen nearly half a dozen examples of nuclear plants closed on short notice across the nation, including San Onofre [in San Diego County].”
San Onofre’s closure came as a shock, as the plant owners — Southern California Edison (owners of 78.2%), San Diego Gas & Electric (20%) and the City of Riverside Utilities Department (1.2%) had in 2009 and 2010 spent hundreds of millions replacing the plant’s steam generators. The tubes of those generators showed premature, excessive wear and were the cause of a 2012 radiation leak.
Instead of replacing the Japanese-made generators, the decision was made to close the plant’s two remaining reactors — Units 2 and 3 (Unit 1 closed in 1992). Some 2,200 workers lost their jobs practically overnight.
PG&E Spokesman, Blair Jones, said the company supported Sen. Monning’s bill. Such studies have been done before. “We perform Diablo Canyon economic analyses every few years,” Jones said before the closure announcement, “and it’s important information for the community to have.”
Other studies include a 2013 Cal Poly study that calculated Diablo Canyon’s annual economic impact at $2 billion nationwide, Jones said, $1.1 billion in California, and $920 million in San Luis Obispo and Northern Santa Barbara counties.
“According to the study,” Jones said, “if the plant were to shut down, the annual economic impact of remaining site operations would be reduced by 99-percent.”
Another fact that’s not in doubt is that PG&E is by far the largest private sector employer in SLO County, and one of the best paying too. Diablo’s 1,500 workers alone have an overall payroll of nearly $250 million (for fiscal year 2014-15) and an average of some $157,000 a year plus benefits, and many of those are union jobs, too.
“The plant is also the largest property taxpayer in the county,” Jones said, “nearly $26 million for the fiscal year 2014/2015, which helps fund schools, public work projects, public safety, and health and other vital services.”
