The recent alarm over a proposed liquid natural gas facility to be built off the coast near Malibu, brings back memories of a fight in the ’60s.
By David Wallace/Special to The Malibu Times
In a recent report in The Malibu Times about the planned liquid natural gas terminal to be built some 14 miles off the coast, Malibu resident Hans Laetz was quoted as saying the project was “the biggest threat to Malibu residents since the DWP wanted to build a nuclear power plant in Latigo Canyon.” Based on letters from readers, many local residents agree.
However, it wasn’t Latigo Canyon where the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power wanted to build what would have been the largest nuclear power generating plant in the world 40 years ago. It was on 305 acres of land located at the mouth of Corral Canyon. And, although it would take eight years, the construction of the million watt, $92 million facility was stopped dead through the determined protest by some 2,000 angry Malibuites and the dramatic revelation that an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) director and government geologists had conspired to cover up the potential for disaster.
“This was to be just the beginning” said architect Terrance Waters, then head of the Malibu Citizens for Conservation, a group formed to fight the project.
“The DWP actually planned to build four plants on the Corral Beach site, the state of California three more, and Southern California Edison an additional three,” Waters added, a patent-holding expert on structures. “This would have meant 10 nuclear plants on the beach in Malibu, making it the largest nuclear plant complex on earth and located at about the most dangerous place possible for the then 20 million residents of Southern California.”
And, Waters continued, “Less than a quarter mile from the first reactor was the Malibu coast fault, which had 8,800 feet of vertical displacement, and 28 miles of horizontal displacement.”
In fact, in its 1963 brochure describing the benefits of the project (including a 200-acre park), the DWP completely ignored mention of the nearby Malibu coast fault.
“Based on the best scientific and technical information,” said Frederick Converse, a soil engineer then employed by the DWP, “the atomic plant will be designed to withstand easily far greater earth shocks than have ever occurred in California.”
Eugene Kaufman, designer of the plant, added that the chance of an accident was “zero.”
To Waters, that was – and still is – nonsense. He cites as examples the 1906, 7.9 magnitude San Francisco earthquake (which displaced 290 miles of the San Andreas fault 25 feet in 4 seconds), and the similar, 1872 Owens Valley quake, which raised the Sierra Nevada Mountains 13 feet.
“Both could have ripped the plant apart,” he said.
Nature also helped the protesters’ campaign. On Dec, 14, 1963, L.A.’s new Baldwin Hills Dam suddenly collapsed from a fault movement, causing major damage and the loss of five lives (many Malibuites immediately pasted bumper stickers on their cars proclaiming “Remember Baldwin Hills”). The following March, a 9.2 quake, one of the most violent ever recorded, hit Alaska, causing a 30-foot (average) vertical land displacement, and killing 131 people.
In April 1964, a month after the Alaska quake, some 500 Malibuites showed up for a meeting of the county supervisors, which, under pressure, reversed the planning commission’s earlier approval of the project.
Under pressure, the AEC finally began hearings on the plan, soliciting testimony from seismologists, geologists and residents on both sides of the battle. They also ordered a trench dug at the site to obtain better geological data, which ominously revealed another fault running through the planned foundation of the plants.
Then, during subsequent testimony before the AEC, Waters, armed with an affidavit from Sen. George Murphy confirming discovery of collusion between the AEC’s Safety and Licensing chief and the Director of the U.S. Coast Geodetic Survey to whitewash their survey, forced the geologists to retract their testimony. It was possible, they finally admitted under oath, that the plant could be damaged in a quake.
A March 1967 revised plan was effectively killed, acknowledged three years later in a DWP report explaining it had “postponed submission of the revised plans … due to lack of generally accepted earthquake design criteria.”
Malibu was saved from becoming a nuclear industrial park.