Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
No matter where they’re stuck in OC’s sprawling road network: on I-5, the 405, Crown Valley Parkway, or in their own driveway — a magical toll road miles from their moribund vehicular situation will time-travel them up, to that heavenly place of commuter-bliss, where slowdowns never occur.
8.4 million people, put at risk for radioactive disaster from a meltdown at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, now rejoice as Southern California Edison announces its closure.
“San Fran has Coit Tower. Paris its Eiffel Tower. DC the Washington Monument. New York City, the Statue of liberty, and us, we got some downtown parking.”
While large fish fail to thrive at Southern California Edison’s artificial reef off the coast of San Clemente, California, mitigation mandated by the California Coastal Commission to repair destroyed kelp beds at their San Onofre Nuclear Plant (called SONGS), a wider marine mammal crisis is ongoing. Could radiation released from SONGS be the culprit in both cases?
Eostre – the Germanic goddess of dawn and fertility, whose name gives us the word Easter – must be pleased. Two millennia of Christianity, and she has yet to be displaced from our annual celebration of fecundity. Easter eggs, representing birth, nod to both pagan and Christian traditions.
Southern California Edison says its analysis confirms that it would be safe to fire up the nuclear plant’s Unit 2 reactor, but as a precautionary move it is proposing running it at only 70%. Yet it also suggests that running San Onofre at 100 percent for 11 months would present a strong possibility of a tube rupture resulting in a catastrophic release of radiation into the environment.
A movement to pave over San Onofre State Beach and Trestles with a toll-road-to-nowhere-for-nobody-but-developers was rejected by the California Coastal Commission and Federal Commerce Department in 2008. Yet, here again the State Water Boards will decide in May whether to grant a permit for the “Stupid Toll Road” to dump contaminated runoff into creeks and the ocean while keeping the dream alive of paving over Trestles.