N-Plant Is Given Plan to Remedy Sea Damage : San Onofre: Coastal Commission’s recommendations are inadequate, angry environmentalists say.

Nearly two years after a 15-year, $46-million study found that the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is breaking federal law by killing off tons of fish and kelp, the California Coastal Commission staff has recommended what to do about it.

In a 60-page report, which the commission will consider at a public hearing July 16, the staff rejected an option favored by environmentalists: the building of cooling towers to reduce the amount of sea water--and marine life--now sucked into the plant.

Instead, the staff report called for the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison, to mitigate the damage by improving the plant’s fish protection systems, building a 300-acre artificial kelp reef nearby and restoring a 150-acre coastal wetland somewhere in Southern California.

Edison officials, who put the price tag for such measures at $30 million, said Tuesday they were pleased.

“Generally, we support the recommendations,” said David M. Barron, an Edison spokesman. “Overall, we believe the proposed measures provide a pretty positive and environmentally beneficial solution to the concerns raised” by the Marine Review Committee, the panel of three biologists that conducted the 15-year study.

Some environmentalists, meanwhile, said they were outraged.

“The Coastal Commission staff doesn’t have the guts to go for cooling towers,” said Rimmon C. Fay, the biologist who represented environmental interests on the MRC panel. He said the staff recommendations are “inappropriate, inadequate and don’t answer the basic question--the fact that the plant continues to operate and do the very damage that the MRC (study) documented.”

Released in September, 1989, the MRC study found that the nuclear plant had caused a 60%, or 200-acre, reduction in the area covered by the San Onofre kelp bed. The study said the plant’s cooling system sucks up and kills 21 to 57 tons of fish yearly, then discharges the debris-filled water into the ocean, reducing natural light on the ocean floor by as much as 16%.

These “substantial” adverse effects--while “not large-scale ecological disasters”--violate the plant’s federal pollutant-discharge permits, according to the study. Edison has disputed that finding, claiming it is in compliance.

The Coastal Commission staff report, released this week, comes after a series of postponements that have stretched over 22 months. Because of staffing shortages and budget constraints, one commission staffer has acknowledged that, when it came to evaluating the MRC report, “We didn’t have anybody working on it for a while.”

As the nuclear plant continued to operate, the delays outraged environmentalists. Last November, the Earth Island Institute, seeing no action from the state agencies, filed suit against Edison, demanding that the company improve the plant’s cooling system to comply with its permits or shut the plant.

A federal judge delayed action on that suit, however, until the Coastal Commission weighed in. The staff report, which purports to address the plant’s permit violations, was therefore an eagerly awaited document.

As well as its mitigation measures, the report recommended that the Coastal Commission ask the state Regional Water Quality Control Board to amend the nuclear plant’s permits. The proposed amendments would require more monitoring of the plant’s effects on fish, kelp and on the amount of light that reaches the sea bottom.

But Richard (Corky) Wharton, an environmental lawyer who unsuccessfully challenged the nuclear plant’s license a decade ago, called that request “just words.” The water quality control board, he said, has no staff to complete such monitoring.

Wharton, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, said the Coastal Commission staff’s recommendations would do little to protect the ocean. Although that disappointed him, he said, it was not a surprise.

“They’ve dropped the ball on this from the beginning,” he said of the Coastal Commission. “It’s just one broken promise by Edison and the Coastal Commission after another. These mitigation measures are not going to correct the violations. . . . But, if Edison can get off with (spending) just $30 million, they’re pretty happy. And they usually get what they want.”

Wharton noted that, in 1974, the MRC study was ordered by the Coastal Commission as a condition of its granting Edison a construction permit to expand from one reactor to three.

At that time, Wharton said, Edison agreed that, if the MRC report discovered “significant” damage, it would make “appropriate changes to the cooling system, including cooling towers.”

The Coastal Commission staff report acknowledges that cooling towers, which would reduce by 90% the 200 million gallons of sea water now sucked into the plant every minute, are “the only prevention technique that would result in essentially full marine resource protection.” However, the staff report noted that Fay was the only biologist on the MRC panel who supported the towers, which would cost $2 billion.

“The other two MRC members rejected this alternative because of its extreme costs and the fact that it would cause other impacts to coastal resources,” the staff report notes.

Wharton said cost should not be a factor.

“That’s not part of the deal. The permit didn’t say, ‘You don’t have to do it if it costs too much,’ ” he said.

The Coastal Commission will conduct a 9 a.m. hearing July 16 at the Huntington Beach City Council Chambers, 2000 Main St., Huntington Beach.