NOTICE OF TECHNICAL REVIEW WORKSHOP
SAN ONOFRE NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION (SONGS)
SAN DIEGUITO WETLANDS RESTORATION PROJECT
May 3, 2023 from 1:30 to 3:30 PM
Del Mar City Hall, 1050 Camino Del Mar, Del Mar, California
A public workshop on the status of the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project will be held on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at the Del Mar City Hall. Virtual attendance via the Zoom webinar platform is possible for individuals not able to attend in person. The purpose of the workshop is to review the status of the wetland mitigation program required by the California Coastal Commission (CCC) to compensate for impacts on coastal marine resources caused by the operations of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). Monitoring and evaluation of the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project is conducted by contract scientists at U.C. Santa Barbara under the direction of the CCC.
Please RSVP at https://ucsb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_L_bYdiOURfau_T-OfgEI9w if you are planning to attend virtually. A zoom link for the workshop and instructions for using Zoom will be sent a few days before the workshop. For more information, please contact Kat Beheshti (katbeheshti@ucsb.edu) or Rachel Smith (rssmith@ucsb.edu) at 760-438-5953. For more information about the SONGS mitigation projects and monitoring programs go to: https://marinemitigation.msi.ucsb.edu.
BACKGROUND
Four mitigation projects are required as conditions of Southern California Edison Company’s (SCE) coastal development permit for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) Units 2 and 3 (permit no. 6-81-330A, formerly 183-73); among them is the requirement to create or substantially restore a minimum of 150 acres of wetlands. The CCC originally adopted the conditions in 1991 to mitigate the adverse impacts of the power plant on the marine environment. The 1991 conditions also require SCE to provide the funds necessary for CCC staff’s technical oversight and independent monitoring of the mitigation projects, to be carried out by independent contract scientists under the direction of the Executive Director of the CCC.
Construction of the wetland habitats in San Dieguito Lagoon was completed in 2011 and annual post-construction monitoring to evaluate whether the restoration meets the performance criteria set forth in the SONGS permit began in January 2012. Concurrent monitoring of physical and biological attributes of the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration and wetland reference sites (Mugu Lagoon, Carpinteria Salt Marsh and Tijuana River Estuary) is used to evaluate whether the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project meets the performance criteria set forth in the SONGS permit. The eleventh year of performance monitoring of the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project was completed in 2022.
PURPOSE OF WORKSHOP
The CCC’s technical oversight and independent monitoring program provides periodic public review of the performance of the SONGS mitigation projects.
The public workshop will provide an opportunity to review the results from the 2022 monitoring. The workshop will feature presentations on the monitoring results, the overall status of the San Dieguito Wetland Restoration in meeting the performance standards required by the CCC, potential problems, and plans for 2023 management oversight and monitoring. The workshop will also provide a status update on recent efforts by Southern California Edison to address the low coverage of salt marsh vegetation. No regulatory decisions will be made on the mitigation project at the workshop. CCC staff will consider information from the workshop in carrying out its oversight and monitoring of the mitigation project. It is the CCC’s intention that the technical review workshop provides an opportunity for information exchange among representatives of state and federal resource agencies, local government representatives, SCE, scientists interested in restoration and environmental monitoring, and the general public.