Home Care In Diablo, CA

“Accept the donated Viera–North Peak and CEMEX properties for starters” – Save Mount Diablo

Asks public to support effort

By Laura Kindsvater, Senior Communications Manager, Save Mount Diablo

Mount Diablo State Park hasn’t added a new property since 2007—16 years ago. For eight years, Save Mount Diablo has been trying to transfer our 165-acre Viera–North Peak property on the very slopes of Mount Diablo’s North Peak, for free. More than a year ago, the CEMEX quarry publicly announced it wanted to donate 101 acres next to the state park’s Mitchell Canyon, including a section of the historic Black Point Trail. We need the public’s help to urge California State Parks to get moving on these critical acquisitions.

Save Mount Diablo’s Executive Director, Ted Clement, stated, “At Save Mount Diablo, we have worked hard to build a large pool of strategic properties waiting to be added to Mount Diablo State Park—properties like the Balcerzak inholding, the Viera–North Peak property, part of Curry Canyon Ranch, and the CEMEX land. We are poised to dramatically increase the size, value, integrity, and stunning splendor of Mount Diablo State Park for more public benefit and connection to nature. Now is the time for action!”

We’ve worked closely with the state for 50 years, helping them acquire land. Mount Diablo State Park’s General Plan includes 7,500 acres of “appropriate future additions,” most on the actual slopes of Mount Diablo’s two main peaks. Sometimes they’d buy property, sometimes we would.

Sixteen years ago, California State Parks stopped making progress on any new additions to Mount Diablo State Park. Save Mount Diablo has stepped in to save threatened properties that should be in the state park until the state could move forward, or they would have been lost.

Within the “appropriate additions” area, we’ve purchased 165-acre Viera–North Peak, 1,080-acre Curry Canyon Ranch, 76-acre Wright Canyon, 20-acre Young Canyon, 95-acre Anderson Ranch, 29-acre Smith Canyon, the 10-acre Balcerzak inholding, and very soon, the 6.69-acre Krane Pond property, locking up eight critical properties worth more than $12 million.

Several more properties make sense as additions, including the 101-acre CEMEX property donation above Mitchell Canyon. Save Mount Diablo negotiated with CEMEX for over six years to have this land donated to Mount Diablo State Park. In 2022, the CEMEX corporation agreed and publicly announced it would make this donation to Mount Diablo State Park.

We take care of and clean up the properties we acquire before conveying these lands to Mount Diablo State Park.

Reasons abound for the logjam. State budget shortfalls during recessions. Proposals to close state parks in 2008 and 2011. Several new State Park Directors and several reorganizations.

One of the biggest problems was the loss of experienced land acquisition staff in Sacramento. But state voters also approved resource bonds in 1998, 2001, 2006, and 2018, each with hundreds of millions of dollars for state parks. The acquisition department should be back up to speed.

As California State Parks faltered, nonprofit land trusts all over the state have stepped in to protect critical properties that might have been lost. We’re told that Viera–North Peak and Curry Canyon Ranch properties are on California State Parks’ top priority list, and park staff urged us to acquire the Balcerzak inholding, which had complicated park management for decades.

We were told that acquisitions might resume if we got funding from other sources, so we did, or helped with management for some time, which we agreed to do. The East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy provided all funding for Viera–North Peak. All they require is a conservation easement or a deed restriction to ensure long-term protection—which California State Parks has so far failed to accept.

After eight years without progress on Viera–North Peak—a free, turnkey property on the very slopes of the mountain, an appropriate addition that California State Parks pursued for years before we were finally able to acquire it—we and the public are getting frustrated.

We’ve asked Senator Steve Glazer and Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan to help move things forward, which they have kindly been doing, and we’re asking the public to urge state parks officials and the California State Parks Commission to make progress.

We are grateful that a small working group has formed, made up of our terrific partners at California State Parks and the East Contra Costa Habitat Conservancy, to help us get lands added to Mount Diablo State Park. However, we recognize that lands not being added to California State Parks is a large statewide issue, so our small working group also needs the voice and support of the public to further our efforts to break the logjam and get strategic lands added to Mount Diablo State Park.

See video of Save Mount Diablo Executive Director Ted Clement and Land Conservation Director Seth Adams speaking about this issue is available on Save Mount Diablo’s YouTube channel at youtu.be/XndEYOgOas8.

We’re asking the public to please send a message simultaneously to these individuals and agencies using this link: bit.ly/3LXEhq8.

About Save Mount Diablo

Save Mount Diablo is a nationally accredited, nonprofit land trust founded in 1971 with a mission to preserve Mount Diablo’s peaks, surrounding foothills, watersheds, and connection to the Diablo Range through land acquisition and preservation strategies designed to protect the mountain’s natural beauty, biological diversity and historic and agricultural heritage; enhance our area’s quality of life; and provide educational and recreational opportunities consistent with protection of natural resources. To learn more, please visit www.savemountdiablo.org.

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Viera–North Peak (Scott Hein)

CEMEX property

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California energy officials have voted to extend the operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant through 2030, extending the life span of the state’s last nuclear plant an additional five years.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved a proposal to keep Diablo Canyon’s twin reactors online, overturning an earlier agreement to close the plant in 2025.

Three commissioners — Alice Busching Reynolds, John Reynolds and Karen Douglas — voted in favor. Commissioner Darcie Houck abstained and Commissioner Genevieve Shiroma was absent.

Thursday’s decision is expected to preserve a large bloc of the state’s zero-emission power supply. But it also raises concerns over the high cost and potential safety issues associated with operating an aging nuclear power plant.

Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.

The state utilities commission acknowledged that the costs associated with the plan were still unknown but were expected to exceed $6 billion. A federal safety review will also be conducted.

State energy commissioners emphasized that the extension should serve as a bridge to renewable energy and that the plant was not expected to operate beyond 2030. The decision, they said, was intended to bolster the reliability of California’s grid, which has narrowly avoided rolling blackouts during heat waves in recent years.

“The short-term extension of the power plant as proposed is a transitional strategy to help California weather the challenges of the energy transition, including the weather and climate extremes that we have experienced ... and the cost challenges that we face in scaling up the clean energy transition so quickly,” Douglas said ahead of the vote. “So this is an opportunity for us to help bridge some years.”

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July 13, 2023

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the plant’s operator, lauded the commission’s decision, saying it will help provide the state with a dependable, emission-free source of energy.

“We’re grateful for the opportunity to answer the state’s call to ensure electrical reliability for Californians,” said Suzanne Hosn, a spokesperson for PG&E.

At a state meeting filled with heated discourse, supporters argued that California needed the power supply from Diablo Canyon to avert outages and meet the state’s climate goals. The plant supplies about 9% of the state’s electricity and 17% of the state’s zero-emission power.

“It was methodically determined that Diablo Canyon is in fact integral to the California electricity reliability,” said Brendan Pittman, a Berkeley resident, who supported the proposal. “It contributes substantially to California’s zero-emission targets and the costs for continued operation are not, quote, too high to justify.”

But a chorus of critics warned that the extension could bring rate hikes from PG&E.

Opponents also argued that the plant’s proximity to several fault lines makes it susceptible to earthquakes, and a significant risk.

The plant, which sits along the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles outside of San Luis Obispo, opened in 1985. A 46-page report by Digby Macdonald, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering, suggested one of the plant’s nuclear reactors “poses an unreasonable risk to public health and safety due to serious indications of an unacceptable degree of embrittlement,” or deterioration due to prolonged exposure to radiation.

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“Inside the aging Diablo Canyon reactors resides an astronomical quantity of radioactivity,” said Daniel Hirsch, a retired director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz. “It only stays inside if it’s constantly cooled. Any disruption in that, an earthquake or accident, can cause a meltdown releasing enough radioactivity to contaminate a substantial portion of California for generations.”

“If you approve overturning the Diablo shutdown agreement, you risk culpability for a nuclear catastrophe,” he continued.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has argued the state still needs the nuclear plant to help keep the lights on as global warming drives higher demand for air conditioning, and as California increasingly relies on solar farms that stop generating electricity after sundown.

Nuclear power plants do not produce planet-warming CO2 emissions. However, they do produce radioactive waste from spent nuclear fuel. Exposure to this waste can damage DNA and increase cancer risk.

The federal government has long delayed its plans to establish a national repository for nuclear waste, forcing nuclear plants, including Diablo Canyon, to keep their waste on site in large steel-and-cement casks.

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The day before his high-profile meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that California has added 4,922 megawatts of utility-scale battery storage to its grid since 2020, and expects another 1,894 megawatts to come online in the next two months. Comparatively, Diablo Canyon has 2,240 megawatts of capacity.

Translated into the key reliability metric of September Net Qualifying Capacity, that’s 6,525 megawatts for new batteries vs. 2,240 megawatts for Diablo Canyon, nearly a 3:1 ratio.

That’s significant because improved reliability was the premise that Newsom and the Legislature relied upon in Senate Bill 846 to spread the high costs of another five years of Diablo Canyon operations statewide, beyond PG&E’s service territory.

What about the energy to charge those batteries? Are we stuck using natural gas plants? No. The California Independent System Operator’s monthly renewables performance reports document that, between September 2020 and September 2023, metered renewables production soared by 42% from 2020’s 4.835 terawatt hours (the amount of power generated by a terawatt generator in one hour) to 2023’s 6.879 terawatt hours. If Diablo Canyon operated at 100% for all 30 days in September, it would produce 1.613 terawatt hours.

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Despite several years of hand-wringing by PG&E about disrupted supply chains allegedly causing slow progress on renewables and storage, the reliability pretext for extending Diablo Canyon’s operations may be fading away.

What’s not fading away is the prospect for continued above-market costs at the plant. PG&E admitted in its grant application to the U.S. Department of Energy that Diablo Canyon had suffered more than $2.1 billion in above-market costs during the most recent five years on record.

Even worse, when required to provide a cost forecast for the five-year extension to the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E put the number at $5.2 billion. The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility and TURN, an independent statewide utility consumer advocacy organization, both challenged the credibility of that estimate. In less than three months, PG&E revised it to $8.1 billion — an increase of 56%.

TURN believes PG&E is still concealing another $2.1 billion, calling the phony estimates “a classic bait-and-switch in the making.”

Ultimately, California will have to determine whether another five years of Diablo Canyon operations is a cost-effective solution to evolving reliability needs. The plant isn’t nimble enough to respond to the rapid ramping up and down requirements caused by the massive growth in solar generation. Like a light switch, it’s either on or off. And it’s designed to operate 90% of the time — 7,884 hours a year.

But the focus of the state’s reliability planning is between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. during four summer months — about 600 hours a year. Experts at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the California Energy Commission think it wisest to focus on the top 100 “net peak” hours each year.

The unavoidable question for Diablo Canyon? Are the plant’s above-market costs during hours when grid reliability is less problematic too high to justify any benefit the plant might bring during the 6.85% of hours for which reliability planning is focused?

In The Tribune’s editorial published on October 25, PG&E CEO Patti Poppe waxes exuberantly about her vision of a limitless future for Diablo Canyon. The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility finds her hyperbole meritless. While Poppe may wish that “it would be a great honor to continue to operate the plant as long as the state would have us,” the stunning Newsom announcement may be a tiny indicator of future cold feet.

Ratepayer burden is no small thing, politically speaking. PG&E rates increased at three times the national inflation rate over the past three years, and they will climb again by at least $25 (and likely more) per month in January. Spreading above-market costs from an obsolescent plant to all ratepayers the Newsom Administration can dun (municipal power customers get a free ride) is not likely to be popular.

As the projected state budget deficit grows larger, let’s not forget that one of the inducements SB 846 lavished on PG&E to extend Diablo Canyon operations is a “forgivable” $1.4 billion loan. It wouldn’t be a complete surprise if the state sought to reclaim the unspent money from that “loan” if the 2024 budget process starts prioritizing General Fund needs.

David Weisman is the legislative director of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, www.a4nr.org.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY AND STANISLAUS COUNTY, CA—Recently, National Park Service staff and volunteers tracked the paths of some special visitors to the Diablo region: California condors! Six condors soared through the skies above Round Valley and Morgan Territory Regional Preserves, one even flying a mile or two west of Mount Diablo’s summit.

“This is amazing news,” said Seth Adams, Save Mount Diablo’s Land Conservation Director. “This is the first flock of California condors to visit Contra Costa in 100 years, and the first record of one flying west of Diablo’s peaks. I started chasing condors 40 years ago and since the recovery program began, I’ve been hoping the birds would reclaim Mount Diablo. Now they are. This kind of good news is happening again and again. But what it really highlights is the importance of the giant Diablo Range as habitat for the birds—200 miles north-south and 3.5 million acres of high-quality intact habitat.”

Over the years, condors have been exploring the northern Diablo Range, lengthening their flights northward as they fly closer and closer to Mount Diablo.

In 2021, a California condor flew into Contra Costa County for the first time in over 100 years, taking an exploratory flight into new territory in the Round Valley–Morgan Territory area.

Last year, another condor was tracked soaring over Brushy Peak Regional Preserve in June, making it the second known California condor in the Mount Diablo area in more than 100 years.

Radio tags or GPS transmitters are placed on all condors, because there are so few, and each one is important to the overall population. The GPS transmitters and subscription service were partially funded by grants from Save Mount Diablo’s Mary Bowerman Science and Research program.

Now six condors, including condors 692, 726, 943, and 1021, have flown close to Mount Diablo in Contra Costa County, spending several hours over Round Valley and Morgan Territory Regional Preserves. Condor 692 flew the closest to Mount Diablo, passing a mile or two west of its summit.

Condor 692 (a 10-year-old male originally released at Pinnacles National Park) and condor 726 (a nine-year-old female originally released in Big Sur) are regularly seen at Pinnacles National Park and have nested there since 2019.

Condor 1021 is a wild-hatched condor that fledged from a nest about 35 miles south of Pinnacles National Park in 2020.

Of the six condors that flew up near Mount Diablo, three have been treated for lead poisoning at some point in their lives. In 2021, Condor 943 was seen with a beer can stuck over his lower beak that he could not get off and made it impossible for him to eat. The biologists at Pinnacles National Park were able to trap him after two and a half weeks and remove the can. This incident reinforced the importance of the Leave No Trace ethic in wild places.

“We are excited to see more California condors from Pinnacles National Park continue to expand their range as they explore Mount Diablo and surrounding mountains. A number of condors are outfitted with GPS trackers and that is how we know when they fly great distances from Pinnacles,” said Alacia Welch, Condor Program Manager for Pinnacles National Park.

According to wildlife biologist Joseph Belli, who volunteers for the California condor recovery program at Pinnacles, this is an exciting year for California condors because there are more birds overall and most of them are young, not quite breeding age. Though condors have been flying north from Pinnacles since 2004, the last few years have seen a significant uptick in their usage of the northern Diablo Range.

“I am starting to notice certain areas they’re paying attention to: Mount Oso and its communication towers, the Sunol and Ohlone regional wilderness areas in southern Alameda County, as well as the Orestimba Wilderness in Henry Coe State Park,” Belli stated. “They also fly near Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton.”

These flights could be the first step towards the condors expanding their range further north, though it might be years before condors nest in Contra Costa County.

“I think it has to do with exploring and learning a potentially promising new landscape,” added Joseph Belli. “I think the birds are getting to know the area better, and I believe that if the population continues to grow, that will be the key to birds claiming territories north of San Benito County.”

Condors require cavities for nesting, so they look for cliffs, large rocky areas, or mature redwood trees with large hollows. They also require good foraging habitat (relatively undeveloped areas, including rangelands) and water to thrive.

The six condors ended their day by flying back down south to roost on a communications tower at Mount Oso, north of Del Puerto Canyon in Stanislaus County, where several of the other juvenile condors were flying around.

In the 1980s, California condors were nearly extinct. Their population was down to 22 individuals. The biggest threat to them has been lead poisoning in their food. Condors are scavengers and may accidentally ingest lead bullets in carrion.

California condors have had a near miraculous recovery over the past 30 years, having been brought back from the brink of extinction thanks to recovery programs that began releasing condors back into the wild in the 1990s. In 2019, new state regulations took effect in California that make it illegal to use lead ammunition when hunting wildlife throughout the state.

Though California condors are still critically endangered, there are now hundreds living in the wild, and biologists continue to document how they use their range through GPS transmitters or radio tags.

As the California condor population continues its recovery, the California condor’s territory could expand throughout the northern Diablo Range. One day, visitors to Mount Diablo might be able to look up and spot California condors soaring overhead.

Save Mount Diablo

Save Mount Diablo is a nationally accredited, nonprofit land trust founded in 1971 with a mission to preserve Mount Diablo’s peaks, surrounding foothills, watersheds, and connection to the Diablo Range through land acquisition and preservation strategies designed to protect the mountain’s natural beauty, biological diversity, and historic and agricultural heritage; enhance our area’s quality of life; and provide educational and recreational opportunities consistent with protection of natural resources. To learn more, please visit www.savemountdiablo.org.

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A California judge on Thursday rejected an environmental group’s lawsuit that sought to block the state’s largest utility from seeking to extend the operating life of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

Friends of the Earth sued in state Superior Court in April, hoping to derail a state-backed proposal to keep the twin-domed plant running for at least five additional years. The group was part of a 2016 agreement with operator Pacific Gas & Electric to shutter the state’s last nuclear power plant by 2025.

Amid concerns over power supplies in a changing climate, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature opened the way for PG&E to seek a longer lifespan last year. In legal filings, the environmental group argued that the 2016 deal to close the reactors “is not fully extinguished,” and that the utility would break what it called a binding contract if it asked federal regulators to extend the operating licenses.

In an 18-page ruling, Judge Ethan P. Schulman dismissed the complaint, agreeing with the company that Friends of the Earth was asking the court to “impermissibly hinder or interfere” with state regulatory oversight of the seaside plant, located midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

If the group’s request was granted, the court would be placed in conflict with state regulators, and it would “enmesh the court in complex questions of energy, economic and environmental policy” that are best handled by the California Public Utilities Commission and other agencies, Schulman wrote.

The group said it might appeal.

“The fight to shutter Diablo Canyon is not over,” Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. The group has a separate case pending in federal court involving regulatory issues tied to the plant’s operation and possible extension of the licenses.

In a statement, PG&E spokesperson Suzanne Hosn said the company is following California energy policy “and our actions toward relicensing Diablo Canyon Power Plant are consistent with the direction of the state.”

The operating license for the Unit 1 reactor expires next year, and the Unit 2 license expires in 2025. The company intends to apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of the year to extend operations by as much as two decades.

California is the birthplace of the modern environmental movement and for decades has had a fraught relationship with nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon pollution like fossil fuels but leaves behind waste that can remain dangerously radioactive for centuries. The Newsom administration is pushing to expand solar power and other clean energy as the state aims to cut emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Newsom’s decision last year to support a longer operating run for Diablo Canyon shocked environmentalists and anti-nuclear advocates because he had once been a leading voice for closing the plant.

The lawsuit represented another mile-marker in a long-running fight over the operation and safety of the decades-old plant, which Newsom says should keep running beyond 2025 to ward off possible blackouts as California transitions to solar and other renewable energy sources.

Diablo Canyon produces 9% of the state’s electricity.

At this juncture, it’s not clear if the reactors will continue operating beyond the expiration of their licenses in 2024 and 2025 — and if so, for how long — since many regulatory and legal hurdles remain.

For example, it’s not yet publicly known what it will cost to update the plant for a longer run given that PG&E was preparing to close it for years. The state could consider backing out if capital costs climb over $1.4 billion - the amount of a forgivable loan the state authorized for PG&E last year as part of the legislative plan to keep the reactors running.

Construction at Diablo Canyon began in the 1960s. Critics say potential earthquakes from nearby faults not known to exist when the design was approved could damage equipment and release radiation. One fault was not discovered until 2008. PG&E has long said the plant is safe, an assessment the NRC has supported.

The U.S. nuclear industry has been through a tough stretch, with reactors retiring and its share of energy production slipping since 2012. But many industry leaders see a renaissance on the horizon, as climate change has brought attention to carbon-free power.