Newbern's Letter to Gaye LeBaron
Monday, February 19, 1979
Ms. GAYE LeBARON
The Press Democrat
427 Mendocino Avenue
Santa Rosa, California
Dear Gaye,
I am submitting this 5-page essay on THE BATTLES OF BODEGA BAY
to you because I believe it ties perfectly with your recent
article on the subject. I request no fee for this effort and
permit you to use the entire piece without my by-line if you wish.
As an anti-nuclear/pro-solar activist, I am primarily interested
in educating people about the dangers we face from nuclear radia-
tion.
I am very proud and grateful Sonomans and other Bay Area
citizens had the wisdom to preserve the marvelous treasure Nature
has blessed us with. Perhaps we need to reflect back on this to
inspire us to continue the struggle.
If you see no use for this personally, please pass on to Pete Golis
or Ray Smith. Thank you. Continue writing significantly.
Sincerely,
JAY NEWBERN
{SIGNATURE}
THE BATTLES OF BODEGA BAY
by Jay Newbern
Sixteen years later, we still have to defend our Sonoma coastline.
No, the Russians are not coming; the enemy is us. This time the threat
comes from the oil companies. They want to drill for oil off Bodega Bay
in Sonoma County and off the Point Arena in Mendocino County. What they ex-
pect to find could satisfy America’s thirst for gasoline for only 30 days.
Remember the Santa Barbara oil spill when a platform site leaked?
The earlier threat to the Sonoma coastline came from another type
of energy corporation, a public utility, and the harm would have been
nuclear radiation instead of oil slicks. Pacific Gas & Electric Company,
the world’s largest power monopoly, proposed to build the world’s largest
nuclear power plant on Bodega Head. PG&E claimed that Bodega Head was the
one spot in the entire Bay Area where electricity produced by a nuclear
plant could be priced competitively with that from a conventional plant.
A 330,000-kilowatt nuclear power plant was to be a giant prototype for
“The Big Step” in making atomic energy cost-competitive.
PG&E chose Bodega Head because it had an unlimited supply of ocean
water for cooling. A quarter-million gallons per minute would be required.
The site was selected also because it was in then sparsely populated So-
noma County which was expected to expand soon. It was 1958.
The General Electric atomic power division plant in San Jose was
to build one of its boiling water reactors (Eureka has one) that would be
operated by fission of uranium dioxide. Other nuclear power plants were
already on line at Humboldt Bay and Vallecitos in Pleasanton. The giant
“nuke” at Bodega Bay was to be completed by 1996 at an estimated cost
of $61 million.
PG&E owned 225 acres at the tip of the Head and so began excava-
tion. A huge 500-feet-deep hole was bulldozed as big concrete trucks
began rolling through the small coastal community of Bodega Bay. Before
it was over, PG&E would pour $7 million into that big hole.
The first major problem discovered about this Sonoma site was that
the huge nuclear plant was to be located only 1,000 feet from the San
Andreas fault zone. The Atomic Energy Commission declared that the dis-
tance must be 1,320 feet! In 1960, an earthquake along this fault line
wrecked San Francisco and Santa Rosa, and caused Bodega Head to ripple
like a wave, according to an oldtime eyewitness. Displacement of the
earth was an amazing 20 feet at nearby Tomales Bay.
In 1963, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall expressed
concern about destroying one of the understanding ecologic areas on the
North American continent, Point Reyes National Seashore, and ruining its
recreational areas. In 1979, as the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant
prepares to be licensed to go on line 21/2 miles from the San Gregorio-
Hosgri fault zone, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus does no-
thing. Sonoma County is somehow spared, San Luis Obispo County sacrificed.
Conservationists against this atomic contamination were the
“Northern California Association to Preserve Bodega Head and Harbor” in
Berkeley, and the “Committee to Preserve Bodega Head” in Sebastopol.
Their techniques to stop PG&E included public debates, lawsuits, petitions,
letter-writing, folksongs, and rallies. Civil disobedience was not util-
ized. One of their publicity projects was the release of helium-filled
toy balloons from Bodega. On them were printed: “This balloon could rep-
resent a radioactive molecule of strontium 90 or iodine 131.” Several
were found in Marin. The winds of Bodega blow strong southerly toward
San Francisco, only 50 miles away.
At Bodega Head, PG&E was able to get the land condemned and obtain
the necessary building permits on the basis that it planned to build a
steam plant. Nothing was said originally about nuclear. The courts
would later rule that PG&E got a use permit without a public hearing.
In 1956, the University of California was negotiating for a Class
A marine research station. With rich tideflats in the Bay, bird habitat
on land, and rich tidepools in Horseshoe Cove, this site was considered
the best on the whole California coast for a marine station. Bodega Bay
was unrivaled due to its great variety of undisturbed ocean life outside
the Bay and contrasting, sheltered types inside the harbor. The National
Park Service, in surveying vanishing American coastlines, designated
Bodega Head as one of the unspoiled pieces of coastline that should be
preserved as a park. Bodega, however, was not on Sonoma County’s Master
Plan, and in 1957, UC withdrew in the face of PG&E interest, and settled
for a Class B site elsewhere in the headlands. The State Division of
Beaches also refused to stand up to PG&E and so the Sonoma County Board
of Supervisors appeared to be closer to an expected $1 million tax yield.
The State Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was no better. It
proved to be no protector of public safety in nuclear energy because it
dealt only with “public convenience and necessity,” and had no experts
to judge radiation hazards. Four PUC Commissioners, with William Bennet
the sole dissenter, said they would leave considerations of safety up to
the AEC (what the NRC used to be called). The Atomic Energy Commission,
of course, was committed to furthering the development of peaceful uses
of atomic energy, so it could not be the final authority on safety.
Just where did the buck stop?
In the pre-atomic-bomb world of 1940, only a few thousand curies
of radioactive material (mostly radium) were available in the entire
world. Nearly 20 years ago in 1960, our weapon-manufacturing program
(not counting testing) , plus our peacetime reactor program, were pro-
ducing billions of curies of liquid, solid, and gaseous wastes every
year. Today it is even higher. So is the cancer death rate.
Bodega Bay lies in the heart of the milk-producing area of Northern
California. Sonoma’s dairy industry could have been ruined perhaps for-
ever by any fallout from the nuclear reactor. Dr. Bill Kortum, a veter-
inarian from Petaluma, discovered iodine 131 in dairy cows near the
smaller (50,000-kw) Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant further north.
In addition to milk, the fishing industry was threatened. Back
in the ‘50s, Bodega Bay was California’s leading port for crab, salmon,
and shrimp, averaging $1.5 million per year. The harbor yielded more
fish than were caught by the San Francisco fishing fleet. Over 100
fishing boats were permanently based in Bodega Bay; during salmon season
some 500 trawlers could be counted. What would nuclear plant water that
had been heated to 55 to 73 degrees hotter than the ocean do to fishing
when it was returned to the Pacific?
Politicians who were against the Bodega nuke included Assemblyman
Alfred Alquist (D-San Jose) , Interior Secretary Udall, PUC’s William
Bennett, the California Democratic Council, and finally Governor Pat
Brown. Only two small newspapers in the county opposed the nuclear
facility: the Sebastopol Times and the Cloverdale Reveille. Disgruntled
Sonomans began a recall movement against Supervisor E. J. Guidotti of
the Bodega Bay district.
The real anti-nuclear leadership, however, came from the ranks
of the people and they were volunteers. David Pesonen, a UC Berkeley
law student at the time, is credited by the most as being instrumental in
the drive to preserve Bodega Head. But the man who began the opposition
drive in 1962 was Karl Kortum, head of San Francisco’s Maritime Museum.
He wrote a letter to the Chronicle and called forth relative Jean, Bill,
and Max Kortum to do battle with the giant monopoly. Rose Gaffney is
another one of the early leaders.
The negative implications of PG&E’s desire to build a nuclear power
plant on Bodega Head continued to multiply. The U.S. Geological Survey
found that the location was unsafe due to the earthquake fault zone. In
addition, the mammoth prototype facility would have contained a safety
system that had never been tested on a working reactor.
The plant’s access road would have knocked out 25 acres of water
in the Bay; there are only 700 acres total for fishing. A high-voltage
transmission line would have been strung across the mouth of Bodega Bay
and the sandpit of Doran Beach State Park. Not only would the vista
have been ruined, but this power line would have interfered with the
shortwave radios on the fishing boats.
And for final consideration, there was the fact that the Federal
Government in the form of the AEC had to provide $500 million insurance
coverage to protect PG&E because no private insurance company will cover
anything nuclear at all.
The first Battle of Bodega Bay lasted five years, from 1958 to
1963, with the conservationists defeating the energy machine. The
second Battle of Bodega Bay is underway to prevent oil derricks off the
coastline. Sixteen years later, the conflict continues.