The City of Irvine is slated to join local groups working to safely secure millions of pounds of spent nuclear fuel remaining at the decommissioned San Onofre power plant, located about 30 miles from the city.
Irvine City Council members voted 4-3 during their Tuesday night meeting to join the Spent Fuel Solutions Coalition and take an active role in Congressman Mike Levin’s Spent Nuclear Fuel Task Force.
The groups consist of experts, local officials, environmental representatives and community members working to address the hazardous waste in San Onofre and study temporary and permanent solutions, like creating an off-site storage facility for the spent nuclear fuel.
The Spent Fuel Solutions Coalition is co-chaired by Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley.
Tuesday’s vote also directed city staff to draft and return with a resolution supporting the safe removal of spent nuclear fuel and help recruit members of Congress to join the bipartisan Spent Nuclear Fuel Solutions Caucus.
Councilmembers Mike Carroll, Betty Martinez Franco and Mayor Larry Agran voted no.
The vote came after Agran had proposed creating a team of experts and stakeholders to draft a plan to address radioactive waste at San Onofre.
During Tuesday night’s meeting, the move Agran proposed was to ask staff to create a draft roster for that expert team and return to the council in February with the proposed member list.
But Councilmember Kathleen Treseder offered a different proposal, emphasizing that the city should join groups that have already been working on this issue for years instead of creating a separate body of experts.
“I want to make sure that we boost and amplify the current experts who are working on this,” Treseder said at the meeting. “I don’t want to be duplicating efforts and maybe inadvertently slow down current efforts.”
“Congressman Levin has been working very diligently,” she continued. “I’m so impressed with him. He very much cares about this issue, and he’s seen a lot of wins already. I don’t want to, in any way, make that more difficult for him. I would just rather be a team player and work with those who are already on the ground.”
Agran called her substitute motion a “very hostile act” and emphasized he wants Irvine to be a leader, not a follower, in handling San Onofre’s leftover toxic waste.
“We have some truly unique talent,” he said. “I really wanted to see if we could explore if we could bring some true value added right away to all of this.”
Councilmember Melinda Liu agreed with Treseder, saying she doesn’t want Irvine to go about this process alone.
“We can still be a leader in a group by joining,” Liu said. “We can be active, but I just don’t see how we can do this on our own since there’s already a bipartisan effort on the Congressional level. This is a federal matter that we don’t technically have the jurisdiction here in Irvine as a city.”
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was decommissioned in 2013 and currently stores approximately 3.6 million pounds of highly radioactive waste, calling into question health and safety implications for millions of Southern California residents who live in the region.
While the U.S. government is supposed to clean up and restore the area, there’s no clear timeline for when federal leaders will get that process going.
Agran argued that the city shouldn’t keep waiting on the federal government and was calling for all the waste to be moved from the empty plant to a fortified storage facility at Camp Pendleton that’s behind the 5 Freeway and further from the coastline.
[Read: Irvine Looks to Become Local Leader for Handling Toxic Waste]
But the council majority didn’t support Agran’s proposal to create a team of experts at this time.
Treseder said they could bring back his idea if they don’t see enough traction after the city joins existing clean up efforts.
“It’s Irvine setting up our own storage planning team and maybe attempting to reinvent the wheel that I’m concerned about,” she said.
Teseder’s proposal for the city to join local groups followed a suggestion made by Dan Stetson, an Irvine resident who serves as chair of the community engagement panel for the decommissioning of the San Onofre plant.
During public comment at the Dec. 9 meeting, he recommended all four points that Treseder proposed and the council ended up approving by a slim majority.
“For decades, we’ve seen plans to remove the spent nuclear fuel,” he said at the meeting. “The problem isn’t making the plan. The problem is implementing them.”
“The problem isn’t technical; it’s political will and institutional reform,” he continued. “We all want the spent fuel removed quickly and safely. We know what needs to be done. We just need to finally do it.”
The Samuel Lawrence Foundation — an organization that advocates for the safe removal, relocation and management of nuclear waste at San Onofre — expressed disappointment in the council’s vote in a Wednesday afternoon news release.
“San Onofre is a ticking time bomb,” Bart Ziegler, president and founder of the foundation, said in the statement. “Instead of pursuing proactive, forward-thinking governance, the Council has fallen backwards. Their choice to wait for someone else on this vital issue places our lives, communities, oceans, and economy at risk.”
Angelina Hicks is the Voice of OC Collegiate News Service Editor. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.