Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel

Public Comments

DateMay 30, 2018
Decommissioning TopicRepurposing of Facilities
Comment / Suggestion:

Don Maruska, Los Osos, CA

15· · · · · · MR. MARUSKA:· Hello.· I'm Don Maruska.· Our
16· ·family is 44-year residents of the county, living in Los
17· ·Osos, and I just wanted to share some perspectives with
18· ·you because, as somebody who founded three companies in
19· ·Silicon Valley and now since coming to this area serve
20· ·as a business coach to organizations and work with
21· ·people solving tough issues together, I see tremendous
22· ·opportunity for this community.· Change creates
23· ·opportunity and so how can we capitalize on that and
24· ·that, I think, is really the cornerstone of what we have
25· ·an opportunity to assess here.
·1· · · · · · So I'm looking at what can be a win-win-win of
·2· ·possibility in this context.· By that, I mean a win for
·3· ·the community, a win for PG&E and its ratepayers and a
·4· ·win for the partners that might come forward and provide
·5· ·new opportunities out of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant
·6· ·overall facility, but how are we going to do that and
·7· ·what can we do to make that happen?· That's going to be
·8· ·the critical issue.
·9· · · · · · The way it can be a win-win-win is that if
10· ·there are opportunities for partners in the community to
11· ·make use of facilities at Diablo Canyon, the then means
12· ·that PG&E won't have to go to the full expense of taking
13· ·those facilities down to bare ground and trying to
14· ·remediate everything.· These are all the existing use
15· ·facilities.· They can actually save money on what the
16· ·decommissioning's going to cost and that creates, also,
17· ·an opportunity for groups, either Cal Poly or others.
18· ·I'm not speaking on their behalf, but there are a lot of

19· ·different groups I've been brainstorming with that have
20· ·ideas of what can be done there.
21· · · · · · So what's needed, though, to make that happen
22· ·is that these things take a long time to come together.
23· ·My experience in other communities with these kinds of
24· ·transition projects is they take eight years of planning
25· ·to come to fruition.· So 2025 is around the corner for
·1· ·assembling the agencies, the grants and everything else
·2· ·you need to do to do any significant thing on this
·3· ·parcel.
·4· · · · · · So my suggestion to the panel and to PG&E is to
·5· ·really forward think it.· Maybe put out some money on a
·6· ·proposal basis to organizations that want some help and
·7· ·get some resources to do some advanced planning, then
·8· ·you could put into this triennial report concrete ideas
·9· ·on alternate uses and you'd begin to get things rolling
10· ·and we could leverage other money from the community,
11· ·from federal agencies, et cetera, to make these things
12· ·happen and get this economy turning around versus just
13· ·going -- stalling out in 2025.
14· · · · · · So with your good leadership, and I've had the
15· ·pleasure of working with a number of you on solving
16· ·tough issues together, I'm sure that you can pull this
17· ·off, but I think we need to start now rather than say,
18· ·okay, we're going to look at what's going to happen down
19· ·the road and hope that your forward leadership will
20· ·carry us there.· Thank you very much.

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