A public workshop on the status of the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project will be held on Thursday, May 9, 2024 at the Del Mar City Hall. Virtual attendance via the Zoom webinar platform is possible for individuals not able to attend in person. The workshop is sponsored by California Coastal Commission (CCC) to provide an overview of the wetland mitigation program required by the 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.
The workshop will be held Thursday, May 9, 2024 from 1:30 to 3:30 PM
at the Del Mar City Hall located at
1050 Camino Del Mar, Del Mar, California
Please RSVP at https://ucsb.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_A76KRKfjSeCsUQYL1Umh8A
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
In 1991 the California Coastal Commission (CCC) added conditions to 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) to mitigate the adverse impacts of the power plant on the marine environment. One of these conditions requires SCE to create or substantially restore a minimum of 150 acres of tidal wetlands to compensate for losses of fish caused by the intakes of the seawater cooling system.. 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 restored 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 twelfth year of performance monitoring of the San Dieguito Wetlands Restoration Project was completed in 2023.
PURPOSE OF WORKSHOP
The CCC’s technical oversight and independent monitoring program provides periodic public review of the performance of the SONGS mitigation projects.
This year’s public workshop will feature presentations on the 2023 monitoring results and the overall status of the San Dieguito Wetland Restoration in meeting the performance standards required by the CCC, areas and causes of underperformance and plans for 2024 management oversight and monitoring. 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.