* County staff report on
decision for Diablo Canyon
Citing a lack of money and
personnel, the county will not carry out
the majority of
recommendations recently made by a civil grand jury
to improve public safety in
the event of a radiation release at
Diablo Canyon nuclear power
plant.
While the nonbinding grand
jury report called "Diablo Canyon: San
Luis Obispo's Katrina'" was
laudatory of the county's emergency
planning regarding the nuclear
plant, it recommended four
improvements.
Most concerned increasing
public information about emergency
preparedness.
"They're great ideas, but it
comes down to funding and resource
allocation," said Ron Alsop, a
county emergency services coordinator
who wrote the county's
response to the grand jury report.
The grand jury's most
expensive recommendation is to upgrade a road
between Avila Beach and Shell
Beach so it can be used as an
alternate evacuation route
from Avila Beach, which is at greatest
risk of being affected by a
Diablo Canyon radiation leak.
A road between Cave Landing
Road in Avila Beach and Bluff Drive in
Shell Beach was destroyed by
landslides in 1995. It would cost
between $5 million and $6
million to repair it to the point that
cars could drive on it, Alsop
said. As it is now, only people
evacuating on foot would be
able to use the road.
"It is currently not feasible
to reconstruct the road or bridge over
the gap left by landslides,"
Alsop stated in his staff report to
county supervisors, who will
consider the county's response Tuesday.
County administrators will
also not follow another grand jury
recommendation that calls for
emergency preparedness information to
be mailed annually to county
households.
Alsop said such a step is
unnecessary because there is an abundance of emergency preparedness
information from a variety of agencies
available to the public,
especially since the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks. This
includes a section in the AT&T telephone
book tailored specifically for
Diablo Canyon.
"It sounds like a simple thing
to do," Alsop said. "But it would
just require us to have an
increase in service level, which means
going to the supervisors for
more money."
Funding is also a problem in
carrying out a third grand jury
suggestion. The county Office
of Emergency Services is planning a
workshop in June to give
emergency planning information to
institutional care
providers. The jury recommended the workshop be
expanded to include people
with disabilities or their caretakers who
live independently.
Alsop is trying to line up
state grants and other funding sources to
expand the scope of the
June workshop. Without it, an expanded
workshop would be beyond the
resources of the county Office of
Emergency Services, he said.
Last year, it cost the county
$5,000 to put on an emergency planning
workshop for 135 people, said
Tracey Vardas, another emergency
services coordinator. This
year the county would like to expand it
to 300 people to meet the
grand jury's recommendation.
It's not known how much that
would cost.
The county has already
complied with a grand jury recommendation to issue an information sheet to
county obstetricians and pediatricians
about the thyroid-protecting
drug potassium iodide.
The grand jury also urged the
county to make sure the Diablo Canyon
information in the telephone
book is accurate; that's been done, Alsop said.
The county response to the
grand jury is included in the board's
consent agenda, which is
reserved for noncontroversial items.
Supervisors will not address
the item specifically unless one of
them asks to discuss it.
What do you think of the
county's decision?