Fireworks at Atascadero Lake July 4, 1982.

A recent letter to the editor in The Tribune complained about the upcoming Independence Day laser show in Morro Bay. According to the letter writer the only proper way to celebrate the birth of a free democracy is to blow stuff up.
Personally I thought that freedom and independence of thought were the point of the day but this letter writer took a dim view of change.
Studies show that fireworks are a source of perchlorate contamination in lakes. The chemical can accumulate in soil and water and has been linked to thyroid damage. Other fireworks recipes are less environmentally risky but they cost more.
When there is an oil spill and injured birds floundering on the beach there is an outcry for environmental reform. It is harder to get people to take on invisible unpronounceable chemicals when they end up in the drinking water.
One of the places that no longer holds a fireworks show is Atascadero Lake. I seem to recall the organizers found the cost and fire risk too high.
Here’s wishing everyone a safe and enjoyable 4th.

Ken Chen made the photo.

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Who said bankers dress conservatively?
Margaret Nybak with San Luis banker Mel McDonald.

January 18, 1969
Photos from the Vault sets the wayback machine to 480 B.C. or the late 1960’s. One of those eras had cameras. Even though the skies were inundating the county with record rains there was still reason to throw a costume party.

The Greeks took over in San Luis Obispo Saturday night.
Despite a drenching downpour, more than 125 of them danced, dined on authentic cuisine and displayed dazzling costumes at the Monday Club.
The occasion was the Beaux Arts Costume Ball, first of this kind ever held here. And from an entertainment standpoint, it was a smashing success.
The bulk of those attending chose to portray figures from Greek history or mythology.
But such latter day figures as Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band, (Don and Carol Koberg) Zorba the Greek (Dr. Ronald Notley) and even Nick the Greek (Ed Jorgesen) were represented too.
The ball was co-sponsored by the San Luis Obispo Little Theater and the San Luis Obispo Art Assocation.

Looks like we have enough talent in town to have a Mardi Gras. Don Koberg would be one of the founders a few years later.

Photos by Michael Raphael

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William McKinley
Teddy Roosevelt
Richard Nixon
Ronald Reagan
George W. Bush

These are all the U.S. presidents who have visited San Luis Obispo County that I have found records on. All except Nixon and Reagan came by rail. The last three would be elected president after their visits. I am not sure if Gerald Ford ever visited here, his son, actor Steven Ford is a county resident.

Thanks to a Paso Robles-USA post by Wordy Dave I was made aware of the T.R. visit. He also has a recent post on one of the first newspapers in the county, the Paso Robles Leader.

I recently made a joke about anarchists advertising but today they would be on a terrorist watch list. One of their number was responsible for the murder of President William McKinley leading to his Vice President Teddy Roosevelt assuming the office.

The Morning Tribune noted the Roosevelt visit was carried out with precision. The train pulled in from Santa Barbara at 5:30 p.m. The band played the Star Spangled Banner after which the door opened and Judge E.P. Unangst and Mayor McD.R. Venable ushered the President to the rear platform of the train. The President bowed to a cheering crowd and a group of ten carriages took the party to the Mission for a tour where Roosevelt was introduced to Father Aguilera.
At six the Mission bells tolled the hour and the party drove to a reviewing stand at a park down Broad and Higuera Streets. The President spoke for 15 minutes, returned to the train and at exactly 6:30 the train pulled out, the hour allotted to San Luis Obispo was done. He would stop in Paso Robles for another speech that evening before leaving the county.

Roosevelt gave a feel good speech expressing his admiration for the state, local agriculture, Cal Poly and veterans.

The article included the full text of the speech excerpted here, under a headline that read:

PRESIDENT WAS MOST
SUCCESSFULLY ENTERTAINED

–
There Was Not a Hitch Nor a Halt Nor an
Accident and Everybody
Was Pleased.
–

Mr. Chairman, and you, my fellow citizens–It is indeed a great pleasure to have the chance of meeting you this afternoon. For three days now I have been traveling through your wonderful and beautiful state, and I marvel at its fertility. And, I am not surprised to see you looking happy, I should be ashamed of you if you didn’t (Applause).

***
I have forgotten of all of the records that you have in the county, but I know that the largest pumpkins, watermelons and onions created are here, so that your agricultural products have made a name for themselves to be feared. And of course in stock raising, in dairying, the county stands equally preeminent.
And I am glad to learn that the state of California is erecting here a Polytechnic Institute for scientific training in the arts of farm life, and more than that, our people have awakened to the fact that farming is not only a practical but a scientific pursuit, and that there should be the same chance for the tiller of the soil to make of his a learned profession that there is in any other business.
***
We have passed the stage as a nation when we can afford to tolerate the men whose aim it is merely to skim the soil, and go on and skim the country and take off the cream and go on; our aim must be upon the laws promotive of irrigation, upon the laws securing the wise use in the perpetuity of the foresees, upon the laws shaped in every way to promote the predominant interests of the country; our aim must be to hand over to our children not an impoverished but an improved country. We wish to hand over our country to our children in better shape, not any worse shape than we ourselves got it.
That is common sense isn’t it?
Yes.
***
It is a mighty good thing to raise such produce as you have raised on your farms, it is a better thing to bring up such children as I have been seeing here today, and I congratulate you on their quality and on their quantity. (Applause.)
I claim to be more or less an expert in them, I have got six myself. (Applause.)
***
I come to you today, I come to you with an ever increased faith in the future of our country, in the future of America, and I believe in you. I believe in you men and women of California, men and women of America, of the United States, because I feel that you are not only sound in body and sound in mind, but that you have that which counts for more than body, for more than mind–character! Character in which many different elements enter, in which above all elements, are those of decency, of courage and of common sense.
Good bye and good luck to you.

Later in the day he would give a speech in Paso Robles and spend the night at the Hotel Del Monte in Monterey.

When conservative Republicans list their great presidents they often leave the progressive Teddy Roosevelt off. Perhaps his fifth cousin Franklin soured them on the Roosevelt name. Perhaps it was bolting from the party to found the Bull Moose party and spoiling another Republican’s presidential bid. In a party that claims to like mavericks he is about as mavericky as you can get.

An abbreviated list of accomplishments:

Youngest President at age 42.
A war hero who stormed San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish American War.
Built the Panama Canal (after fomenting a revolution that split Panama from Colombia.)
The Modern American Navy
Peace making between Russia and Japan which won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Dissolved 40 monopolistic corporations to enable competition
Established federal oversight of food processing
The first conservationist president, preserving 5 national parks, 18 national monuments and millions of acres of national forest.
Teddy Bears? Named after the 26th President.
Mount Rushmore, that’s him next to Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson

On the train there were photographers from the San Francisco newspapers, The Bulletin, Call and Examiner. Perhaps they have dusty negatives on their shelves. I’d sure like to see a photo from San Luis Obispo. Tribune Editor Benjamin Brooks was a member of the reception committee. The list of names include business men Capt. Jas. Cass, H.M.Warden, W.H. Warden, Norman Sandercock, B.Sinsheimer, O.Sinsheimer and Sheriff Yancy McFaddin.

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Telegram-Tribune wire editor David Verbon practices fondue fork technique taught by Cal Poly home economics instructor Connie Breazeale.

October 24, 1968
You’ve heard of fast food?
This is fad food.
Fondue.
One of the famed fads of the late 1960’s and early 70’s. San Luis Obispo even had a restaurant with this menu item. I think it was called the Wine Street Inn…in the basement of the Network Mall.

As recounted in the Linnea Waltz story fondue Swiss legend tells the story of two opposing armies ran out of food. One had bread the other had milk. The fighting stopped and the eating began. More sophisticated armies later used cheese instead of milk.

This sounds a lot like the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup origin story.

Fun Fondue Facts

• When cooking the mixture, stir in a figure 8 design for optimal mixing.

• Halfway through the meal down a glass of cherry brandy, another at the end of the meal.

• If your bread falls off the fondue fork you owe the group a bottle of wine, to avoid this push the tines of the fork clear through the crust of the bread.

• Unlike stadium nachos, processed cheese is not welcome in fondue.

• Fondue can be made in a simple 9 step process

I am so grateful we don’t have to print food pages in black and white any more. No one wants to eat gray food.

Photos by David Ranns

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Eight months after starting the list I now have the 10th item for my top ten list of things that have changed the history of San Luis Obispo County.
Drum roll please….
State prisons.

From California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo to Atascadero State Hospital to the now closed California Youth Authority in Paso Robles, millions of dollars and hundreds of careers have been injected into the local economy via the payroll and construction at these institutions.
CMC’s minimum security West Facility opened in 1954. The medium security East Facility opened in 1961. The correctional facility was named in an era when rehabilitation was the watchword so prison isn’t part of the name, colony is.
The CMC website lists the 2006/2007 combined medical and operating budget as $215 million dollars with a staff of 1,870 and 6,586 inmates in both facilities.
The community also gets the benefit of having inmate fire crews and work crews.
The Wikipedia page has a list of famous inmates, which included Timothy Leary and Huey Newton. Leary was also arguably the most famous escapee.

April 6, 1959
Unbylined photos of the construction were on the front page of the then Telegram-Tribune. Earth moving bulldozers crawled over the site of the administration building and concrete walls of the cellblocks were being poured. This has to be in the list of biggest construction projects in the county.

This is my guess on how a list could look, though I’m open to suggestions.

Diablo Canyon
Cal Poly
CMC
Morro Bay Power Plant
Hearst Castle
Salinas Dam
Cuesta Grade Highway projects

I seem to recall someone telling me that the prison grew out of surplus Camp San Luis Obispo land and that there may have been a stockade on the site originally. Perhaps someone knows those early details.

Having just discovered a bulging folder of photos from the early days of CMC there will be a few posts over the next few months on the state prison.

***

UPDATE

Major (retired) Mark Johnson, Director of Community Activities, Camp San Luis Obispo sends this photo from almost the same spot 50 years later. Thanks for sharing!

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OLD CUESTA ROAD–A photo from the California Division of Highways [now Caltrans] which once reported 71 hazardous curves on the highway north of San Luis Obispo. The road was built in 1915 and improved in 1923, the photo is from about 1922.

Something about the Cuesta Grade captures the imagination of readers.  One of the popular pages in Vault is a Cuesta Grade accident photo from 1963. A quick web search shows interest in the pass from railroad and highway historians.

The railroad spanned the grade in the late 1800’s The automobile came a few years later. Stage Coach Road is the closest thing today to the original trail over the grade.
On September 12, 1965 an Elliot Curry story was published on the history and future of the Cuesta Grade. [A few paragraphs have been rearranged and the story edited for length. The first part of the story talks about the highway department plans then delves into history. ]

The Cuesta has always been a formidable foe.
The first route over the pass was called the “Padre’s Trail” and it simply followed the bottom of the Canyon, dodging obstacles along the creek. The first county road over the pass was constructed with a $20,000 bond issue in 1876 and was called Cuesta Road. It followed the westerly slope and most of it is still there, but recommended only for daring drivers.
Before the coming of the railroad in the Nineties [1890’s], much of the grain and wool from the north part of the county had to be hauled over the pass to San Luis Obispo and supplies for the ranches had to be hauled back over the torturous route.
For the big freight wagons, pulled by six or eight horses it was a day’s journey just to get over the grade. On leaving San Luis Obispo the first stop was the Waterfall saloon, built over San Luis Creek, near the start of the long climb. It was eight miles to Bean’s station at the foot of the grade on the north side and it took a good eight hours to make it.
Henry Twisselman, a pioneer of the Shandon country, always claimed to be the only man who ever drove a 12-horse team over the grade with three wagons hitched together–the ancestor of some of today’s truck and semi-trailer monsters.
The State Division of Highways office was organized in San Luis Obispo in 1912 and it soon came to grips with the Cuesta.
In the fall of 1914 contract No. 110 was let for a 24-foot roadbed and gravel surfacing on the easterly slope of the pass. Total cost was $58,771 and the surface was oiled in 1916 and maintained as such until 1922.
In 1922 curves were widened and a reinforced concrete pavement was put down with curbs along each side. Cost of this project was $169,166 and parts of the old pavement can still be glimpsed along the mountainside where it wound its way through 71 curves.
By 1936 the old paved route had become a traffic trap that could delay motorists by as much as half an hour. The state highway commission decided to make this one of the best mountain highways in the west and in the following two years they appropriated $945,000 for the job. Metropolitan Construction company built the four lane highway in 18 months.
***
When the present grade was opened in 1938 it was called the third largest road building job in the west. Excavation involved 1,365,000 cubic yards of earth, considered a monumental task at that time. Today more earth than that is moved to build the Cayucos by-pass.
The Cuesta Grade crosses a pass in the Santa Lucia Mountains and whatever else they may be, these mountains are not “rock ribbed.” One of the biggest problems encountered in the construction was the instability of the mountainside where the mud deposits were sometimes 40 to 50 feet thick. The problem persisted for years at the Division V [Highway Dept.] engineers devised ways of draining the water out of a side hill which kept sliding toward the canyon bottom.
***
Some of the most harrowing chapters in the history of Cuesta ended when the freeway was built through San Luis Obispo. When Highway 101 was still routed down Monterey Street, runaway trucks used to come screeching and honking through the city at 100-mile-an-hour speeds. In one of the last such episodes a truck raced along Monterey all the way to Nipomo [Street] and then took out the corner of a a building as it dived into San Luis Creek.

At the time there was a push to convert all of Highway 101 in the county from expressway into freeway, eliminating grade level access. That goal that eludes the road to this day.
The Cuesta was still using the 1930’s era bridge over the railroad within my driving career. The road has undergone at least two major face lifts since the mid-1960’s and many of the same issues bedevil drivers and road engineers.

And yes, the term Cuesta Grade is redundant. So is Morro Rock. Apparently boosters in the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce tried to get the name changed in the 1930’s to La Cuesta. Still waiting for that one to catch on.

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I attended the 50th anniversary of the fatal crash September 30, 2005.

It was a surreal scene, replica cars, a James Dean impersonator and the actor’s fans arrived at the memorial in Cholame then drove to the remote intersection where the accident  took place.

Fans walked along with little children on the busy highways trying to get closer to an icon who had died before many of them had been born. Dean had made only three movies and would become an icon in the years after the accident. One fan had made a transparency of the accident photo and tried to line it up with the hills. The actual accident site on September 30, 1955 is today a ranch field, the highway has been realigned for decades.

When the time of the accident was at hand a replica car drove west on Highway 46 to the junction with Highway 41. The low slung silver Porsche reflected the sky blending with the roadway, almost invisible to my eyes. Sunlight was almost straight in the Porsche driver’s eyes has the car came downhill to the anticipated relief of shade in the valley floor.

In today’s celebrity culture the story would have a more prominent piece of real estate on the front page. Mixed in on A-1 with 14 other stories,  weather, events calendar and a photo was the result of the investigation into the accident that killed James Dean.
The story contains an error, Donald G. Turnupseed was the driver of the car that collided with Dean’s.

Jury Finds

Dean Death

Accidental

October 11, [1955]
PASO ROBLES,  Oct. 11– After deliberating only 24 minutes a verdict of “accidental death with no criminal intent” was returned in the coroner’s inquest into the death of movie star James Dean here this morning.
Returning the verdict was Don Orcutt Sr., foreman.
The Jury went out at 12:27p.m. to deliberate after hearing testimony of California highway patrolman O. Hunter of Bakersfield. Hunter made the arrest of Dean near Bakersfield on highway 99 for speeding at 3:30 p.m., two hours before the fatal accident occurred.
Hunter fixed the distance from the place where he had given Dean a speeding ticket to the intersection of highway 41 and 466 where the movie star collided with the car of Harold Turnupseed, 24-year-old Cal Poly student of Tulare, at 108 miles.
Tom Frederick of Shandon told of driving in back of the Turnupseed car which was coming off highway 41.
Fredericks, a Shandon bee keeper and his brother-in-law, Donald Dooley, were traveling east when Turnupseed passed them at 60 miles an hour, the testimony brought out. Turnupseed slowed down to less than 40 miles an hour before he came to the intersection where the accident occurred.
Fredericks said that Turnupseed appeared to attempt to get out of the path of the oncoming sports car.
Dooley, who took the stand at his own request and Fredericks testified that Wuetherich had been the driver of the car. They said that Wuetherich had on a red tee shirt while Dean was wearing a white tee shirt.
Wuetherich, now in a Glendale hospital, is unable to speak English but his statements were taken through an interpreter the Rev. M.J. Galle of the First Mennonite church of Paso Robles.
Wuetherich said they had stopped at Blackwell’s corner for a soft drink and an apple while coming over 466 from Bakersfield. He said they stopped for Approximately 15 minutes.
According to the coroner’s inquest this fixed the speed of Dean’s car at 85 to 86 miles per hour.

You’ll have to look up the rest of the story on microfilm…it jumps to page 2 at this point.

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Using notes made by pioneer surveyors, Dean Kintner of the Division of Highways in San Luis Obispo has uncovered original blaze marks made on two oak trees in 1858 and 1889 despite the fact that the lettering had been grown over for many decades.
The trees were in areas where right-of-way is being cleared for new construction–one on Highway 166 in the Cuyama Valley and one on Highway 46 near Paso Robles.
In the case of the Paso Robles tree, Kintner, who is assistant location engineer in the office, here, used a copy of survey notes made by George Story in 1886, when he was surveying a subdivision called Rancho Paso de Robles. It covered a large area where Highway 46 leaves Highway 101 in the direction of Cambria.
Story marked many of the oaks at the time as “bearing trees.” The blaze is used by surveyors as a reference or “witness” to a survey corner post.
Following the description in the notes, Kintner selected what he believed should be the blazed tree, although there was not a sign of any marking on it.
When the tree was felled, a waist high section was cut out and then split open, under Kintner’s careful guidance.
Sure enough, there was the blaze mark, “PR397/BT” –as legible as the day it was made. When the tree was marked it was 12 inches in diameter. In 82 years it had grown to a diameter of 40 inches and the blaze was completely buried under several inches of wood and bark.
As the tree grew over the blaze, the imprint of the markings was left on the new wood like the image in a mirror, and this is also legible in the opened section.
The blaze uncovered in the Cuyama Valley belongs to the early history of the area. The survey was in charge of Ralph W. Norris and the notes used were made on Oct. 14, 1858, almost exactly 110 years ago.
Norris was making the survey for the U.S. surveyor general’s office in San Francisco, locating township lines in an area of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties that is only slightly more settled now than it was then.
Working with Norris’s notes, Kintner judged that a certain tree in the right-of-way of the current realignment was the live oak which Norris Described.
At the time it was 14 inches in diameter. Now the same tree was 36 inches in diameter.
Cut down and split open, the old oak revealed the blaze, just as suspected.
The lettering was no longer legible, but the hachure, (deep slash) which intentionally penetrates more deeply than the blaze, was easily recognizable.
The surveyors also noted that the tree had twisted almost 180 degrees during the past century, putting the blaze on the opposite side from which Norris made the original mark.
Kintner and his survey crew have preserved the blazed sections of the two old trees and have assembled them as part of an informative exhibit in the foyer of the Division of Highways building at 50 Higuera St.
Facsimiles of the original survey notes and their recorded survey maps are shown, together with a scribing tool used to mark the trees. The exhibit may be viewed weekdays from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. A spokesman for the Division of Highways is usually available to answer questions.
Interest in the historic tree markings had been stimulated a Highways Division spokesman said, by an August 12 article in the Telegram-Tribune concerning crosses blazed on ancient oak trees on the Al Jensen ranch in Vineyard Canyon.
Kintner surmised that the crosses probably were boundary markings made to indicate land claimed by the missions. The cross blaze was used in other parts of the country in the same way he said.

To give an idea of the time scale the earlier mark was made when James Buchanan was president. Abraham Lincoln would be next, California had been a state for a mere 8 years.

The photographer made a 1960’s era decision to include a secretary in the photo. I guess he thought tree stumps were boring. If the photo were being made today the man quoted in the story, Dean Kintner would be in the photo.

Another veteran reporter Warren Groshong reported on school funding at the top of the page and the gist of the story was that San Luis Coastal Unified School District owes PG&E a big thank you note. With the electric power plant in Morro Bay the district found itself better funded in 1968 than next-door neighbors and this was long before the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant came online.
Just five years before the Sunnyside Elementary School District (pre-unification) had sold its bus due to budget woes.
The assessed value of the Morro Bay electric power plant in 1967-68 was almost equal to the entire Atascadero School District.
At the time a proposal was floated that Atascadero and San Luis Coastal districts could merge but it was thought that Atascadero residents would balk at paying higher property taxes, even if the rate was expected to drop after the nuclear plant started operation. Voters from both districts would have to approve a merge. It is hard to imagine that the regions divided by Cuesta Grade agreed more often back then.
Another option was the state changing tax equalization rules but any change in state funding schemes was seen as dependent on Los Angeles. Voters in California’s biggest school district would not approve any plan that reduced their funding.
Since then Proposition 13 and other laws have changed funding flows but San Luis Coastal is still the best-funded district in the county.
The graphic says it all. Ok, so it is not a visually sophisticated chart but don’t be scorning the humble bar chart, even if it is mostly wasted white space. Today our designers would use less than 1/4 the space to create a cleaner graphic. Computers have made the creation of graphics cleaner and easier than the old cut and paste days.

(In 1968 they estimated one nuclear unit at Diablo Canyon would cost $188 million and be completed in 1972 the other $167 million with a completion date not set. Both of these numbers would change radically.)
Photo was by David Ranns

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The drip system was the brainchild of water starved Israeli farmers. Today it is not just for farmers; almost all new landscaping uses drip irrigation. Most of the soil surface stays dry as an expanding cone of damp soil feeds the roots of plants below.

Long time reporter Linnea Waltz researched and wrote a long article explaining the new technique. (This is probably the reason the photos were shot weeks before the article ran November 2, 1973.)

John H. Evans, county director and farm advisor, said “Much study needs to be done in order to perfect drip irrigation techniques under San Luis Obispo County’s varied soil and climatic conditions.
“However work to date indicated they can be used effectively on many irrigated crops in this county.
“It is our belief this new method holds much promise for water-short San Luis Obispo County. With such irrigated crops such as lemons, avocados, and wine grapes developing here, along with an increase in our population it is important we make the best use of available moisture.”

At the time of the article 30,000 acres in the state were using the new drip technique.

My grandfather was shocked at the waste when he saw a grain field ploughed under before it could be harvested.
The replacement crop? Grapes.
The field, and its neighbors never went back to grain.

Photos were by Larry Jamison.

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This undated print from our files shows the construction of the electric power plant in Morro Bay.

The towering smoke stacks are 450 feet tall.

According to HeritageShared.org  construction on the first electric power generating unit in Morro Bay began in October 1953. California’s population was booming in the post World War II era and a former Navy training facility was converted to peacetime uses. Over the next decade the plant grew to four units with three 450 tall smoke stacks. (Two units share a smoke stack.) As an aesthetic consideration the outside of the plant was covered with metal sheeting, unlike the more industrial Moss Landing plant.

Monday May 15, 1961

Largest Steam CondenserFinished for Morro Bay

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — The largest steam condenser ever built at the Westinghouse Sunnyvale manufacturing division is shown here before shipment to Pacific Gas & Electric company’s Morro Bay electric generating plant. The apparatus is 24 feet high, 28 feet wide and 48 feet long. Insertion at the site of 10,342 aluminum brass tubes will bring the weight of the condenser and accessories to almost 1,000,000 pounds.In operation, 8,820,000 gallons of Pacific ocean water flowing through the 94 miles of tubing will cool and condense 1,420,000 pounds of spent steam an hour. The water resulting will be converted into steam again in a boiler to spin the rotors of a Westinghouse 330,000 kilowatt turbine generator.Workmen will separate the condenser into nine parts and load it at Sunnyvale aboard eight Southern Pacific railroad flatcars for Santa Margarita where it will be trucked the remaining 25 miles to Morro Bay.

The plant was a technological marvel when designed but today almost 60 years have passed.Tribune environment reporter David Sneed has covered many of the proposals for the site and offers these observations:

The future of the Morro Bay power plant is very uncertain. The antiquated plant is inefficient and operates at a fraction of historic levels. This bad news for Morro Bay because the city collects taxes based on the amount of natural gas the plant uses.

The owners of the plant have contracts to keep it operating at low levels for the next couple of years. After that, it will have to be rebuilt if it is to keep operating, a project that is expected to cost about $1 billion.

The fate of the plant is uncertain because the state is concentrating on renewable, non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power, such as the three solar plants proposed for the Carrizo Plain. Also, the plant’s once-through cooling system is damaging to the ocean environment and is unpopular with state regulators.

The plant can’t stay in its current form and the city of Morro Bay needs to plan for the future.
Environmental groups have floated a lot of wonderful dream ideas for the site (aquarium, performing arts center, park) without funding sources. Regulators balk at approving a new project with consequences to air and water quality. Power generators have the money to decommission the old plant but won’t commit unless they see a profit.
After decades of being in the same hands, deregulation has led to the site to changing owners every few years.
Here is an idea. As we can see from this article, a plant like this has a working life about as long as a human life.
Could we approve a new facility that has sunset clause with funding built in?
The utility owner would be responsible for paying a bond each year that would be applied to building what the community wanted (aquarium, theater, natural history museum, revolving restaurant atop the smoke stacks). Fail to pay, forfeit the concession.The utility owner would also be responsible for paying into an environmental mitigation fund that would offset the damage the plant generated and to decommission the site to clean bare ground at the time of sunset.

A few years back one of our reporters wrote a story about the Los Osos Chamber of Commerce. They had produced a brochure that pasted a photo over one of their major sponsors, PG&E. The full page picture of Morro Bay, sandspit and Rock had an inset photo of a seagull pasted over the place where the power plant’s smoke stacks stood.Idon’t blame them,

I’d like to see the smoke stacks removed in my lifetime.
The community needs to set a goal and come up with a way to get there from here.

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