Laura Pezzini
lpezzini@mustangdaily.net
T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Stop Ocean Blasting” peppered the crowd at the California Coastal Commission’s (CCC) meeting in Santa Monica on Wednesday, protesting seismic testing off the Central Coast.
It seems they worked. The CCC denied Pacific Gas and Electric Company‘s (PG&E) request to conduct seismic tests at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, located near Avila Beach.
The CCC voted the seismic tests were not necessary based on previous studies and also not worth the potential damage to local marine life. The alleged effects on marine life span from the potential physical harm to animals that stray too near the cannons to the fact that the testing would take up areas which are normally a wildlife habitat.
“We aren’t discounting or saying that these issues of hazard assessment aren’t important and the questions of public policy around energy policy in California aren’t important, but this is not the project, in our view, that is appropriate at this time,” CCC Executive Director Charles Lester said at the meeting.
PG&E originally placed its proposal in April 2011, and since then has been advocating the use of seismic testing as a method of learning more about the area surrounding Diablo Canyon, which sits atop a fault line. It submitted a revised proposal to the CCC in early October.
The CCC determined the seismic tests were not necessary because of the fact that much is already known of the local fault lines.
“The testing so far that they have done, the 2-D and the 3-D, has shown that their predictions are conservative, that the plant actually is safer than what they thought it might be,” commissioner Danya Bochco said.
PG&E said in a statement released Wednesday that although it is disappointed with the results of the meeting, the company “continually studies earthquake faults in the region of Diablo Canyon and seismic events around the world to ensure the safety of the facility.”
The seismic testing would have consisted of massive sound waves shot from underwater cannons aimed at the ocean floor below. The reverberations from those sound waves would then be recorded and the data used to create a three-dimensional map of the ocean floor.
Claims that marine life would be harmed by the seismic tests have abounded since the initial proposal, and several wildlife and marine activist groups became involved in the following months.
Representatives from the Surfrider Foundation, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Oceana and several other environmental organizations spoke up at the CCC’s meeting, voicing their fears that marine life would suffer at the hands of the seismic testing equipment.
“Among other things, air guns have been shown to silence whales and other marine mammals, to disrupt their foraging, to drive them from their habitat,” NRDC Marine Mammal Program Director Michael Jasny said. He said sound is a vital part of marine mammals’ existence.
Cal Poly Surfrider Foundation president Adam Rianda said although no one from their Cal Poly group joined the local chapter at the meeting, this was an issue that held much importance to the club.
“It would have done major damage to our coastline, and I don’t think they fully understood the consequences of it,” Rianda said of the seismic testing.