SAN ONOFRE - WATER DISCHARGE 25 DEGREES F WARMER THAN OCEAN

Pratap Chatterjee (investigative reporter based in Berkeley, California), "Bechtel's Nuclear Nightmares", CorpWatch, May 1, 2003

Environmental Perils

The local environmental costs continue to mount every day as the [San Onofre] plant sucks in huge quantities of plankton, fish and even seals with the water to cool the reactors. It is destroying miles of kelp on the seabed by discharging water that is 25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than ocean temperature, according to Mark Massara, director of the Sierra Club's coastal program.

"It's an unequivocal environmental and economic disaster with no redeeming features whatsoever," Massara noted.

[note: this excerpt was also in article that Chatterjee wrote a few years ago: The earth wrecker: The company that won the contract to oversee the rebuilding of S.F.'s water system has a disastrous record worldwide. , San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 31, 2000]. Actually, he was even more strident back then, when he included the sentence: "Massara says San Onofre is the worst facility ever built on the California coast."

nuclear.com note: Mr. Chatterjee hosts the Terra Verde show on Friday afternoons on KPFA radio - Berkeley. Hear it live on the station's streaming MP3 broadcast over the net.