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THE COAST NEWS
VOL. 27, NO. 5
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MAKING WAVES IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
FEB. 15, 2013
PLANT’S RESTART STILL HAS Council asks for STONG OPPOSITION LOCALLY report on initiative By Jared Whitlock
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station remains shut down since January of last year because of degradation in some of the steam generator tubes. Owner Southern California Edison wants to restart the plant at a reduced capacity. San Diego public and government officials have expressed concerns about the safety of any restart. Courtesy photo By Rachel Stine
COAST CITIES— The U.S. NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) fielded numerous questions about the incapacitated SONGS (San Onofr e Nuclear Generating Station) from San Diego politicians and a m yriad of Southern California residents at a public meeting on J an. 12 at Capistr ano Beach. The meeting took place just after Senator Barbara Boxer’s recent accusations that the plant’s operator and primary owner SCE (Southern Calif ornia Edison) was aware of pr oblems with the plant before its emergency shutdown over a year ago. A panel of NRC staff and se veral SCE officials ad dressed more than 1,000 people at Capo Beac h Church to provide basic information on the commission’s ongoing in vestigation of SONGS and consideration of SCE’s pro-
SEEING THE SUNNY SIDE When a group of women began noticing changes in their friend’s behavior, they came to her aid, and later formed the Sunny Support Group. A8
posal to restart part of the plant at a reduced capacity. “I’m here today to testify, to ask that SONGS remain closed until every safety issue is resolved. Public safety, and not money and not n uclear power must be our number one concern,” said San Diego County Super visor Dave Roberts at the meeting. SONGS was shut do wn in late January 2012 after a small leak of radioactive fluid within the plant’ s Unit 3 led to the disco very of unprecedented degradation of steam generator tubes. Subsequent inspections unco vered additional tube w ear in SONG’ s other unit, Unit 2. The NRC as well as the California Public Utilities Commission is currently investigating SONGS to esta blish whether or not the station can safel y provide electricty in the future. SCE has since proposed restarting
SONGS’ Unit 2, which had less e xtensive tube wear, at 70 percent capacity for five months and then r eexamine the steam tubes. While the opinions v oiced at the meeting both supported and opposed the restart, all statements made by San Diego representatives expressed concerns about the plant’s safety. “(Del Mar’s City Council has) learned a lot fr om the pr oblems with Fukushima and that is one thing we cannot ignore. We don’t want that to happen here,” said Deputy Ma yor of Del Mar Lee Ha ydu at the meeting. “Every time we meet with some public officials, we always ask the e xit route for all of us, we all kno w there is no evacuation route.” “We call for a full, thorough, and transparent investigation regarding
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ENCINITAS — Council could have adopted the “Right to Vote” initiative at Wednesday night’s meeting, but in the end, Council ordered an independent analysis of the initiative’s fiscal impact and effect on land use. Under the initiative, any zoning changes that increase height or density beyond current city limits would require a majority vote from the public. Additionally, changing the zoning type of a parcel in some circumstances would need voter approval. Councilman Tony Kranz noted he signed the initiative last year. But he was reluctant to adopt it outright during the meeting. “My signature was a step in getting this question before the voters,” Kranz said. The independent analysis on the initiative will be presented to Council either at the March 13 or March 20 meeting. At the meeting, Council once again has the option of adopting the initiative. If Council declines to do that, the initiative will be placed on the ballot for a special election, likely for June 4. The special election would cost the city an estimated $350,000 to $400,000. More than a dozen proponents of the initiative at Wednesday’s meeting urged Council to adopt it then and there. For one, they said that action would save money on a special election. Most of all, they argued the initiative is critical to preserving community character. “This is not a no-growth initiative,” said Bruce Ehlers, spokesman for the initiative. He added that residents would vote in favor of development they can live with. “It puts the final approval in the hands of the voter,” Ehlers said. TURN TO INITIATIVE ON A6
Filing error delays appeal hearing for charter school By Rachel Stine
CARLSBAD — Because staff misfiled its original charter appeal, OPA (Oxford Preparatory Academy) is restarting the process to appeal the Car lsbad Unified School District’s rejection of its petition to open a c harter school in Carlsbad before the San Diego County Boar d of Education. “What we see in this petition, the appeal (to the county) did not contain the same information that was submitted to Carlsbad,”said Board of Education Chief Communications and Public Information Officer Music Watson. OPA is r equired by California Education Code to submit the exact same charter petition to the boar d as w as originally submitted to the Carlsbad School District in order for an appeal to be considered, said Watson.
OPA submitted additional API score and demographic data, while omitting other information that was initially in the petition, said Watson. As a result, a public hearing that w as scheduled for Feb. 13 before the boar d to receive OPA’s petition appeal was cancelled. But OPA Executive Director Sue Roc he claimed that only four pages of API score data from the charter’s appendix were missing fr om the board’s copies due to an accidental computer error while the c harter was being copied. “I don’t want it to be implied in any means that the entire charter was different. That is not true at all, ” said Roche. She said the page mix up was completely unintentional because the missing data furTURN TO CHARTER ON A14