Every month, Gianna Patchen, our Chapter Coordinator, and Andrew Christie, a member of the chapter’s Conservation Committee and Chapter Director from 2004-2023, publish an opinion column in New Times. Here are summaries, with links to their most recent articles.
Diablo Canyon owes the public land conservation
Published in New Times on November 6, 2025
The November installment coincided with the first hearing of PG&E’s request for a Coastal Development Permit to keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant open for another five years. The Sierra Club joins state and local elected officials in urging the California Coastal Commission to reject the proposed meager mitigations for the power plant’s ongoing harm to the marine environment and instead require, at minimum, permanent protection for all 12,000 acres of undeveloped coastal lands around the plant, a goal which SLO County residents have been reaffirming for the last 25 years.
Diablo Canyon still owes us land and conservation
Published in New Times on December 4, 2025
The December installment continues to make the case after the November Coastal Commission meeting, as PG&E and Coastal Commission staff continue discussion of a more acceptable mitigation package for Diablo’s environmental impacts before PG&E makes another attempt at a permit at the Commission’s Dec. 11 meeting. The Commission should ignore County Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg’s plea for the smallest and cheapest amount of conservation, instead ensure the maximum amount of land protection as an enforceable condition of PG&E’s permit prior to any future land sale, and require the restoration of coastal wetlands and estuaries in order to directly mitigate Diablo’s impacts on marine life. (Result: Yes, yes, and no, respectively.)