County to disperse millions to ease Diablo Canyon closure
–The County of San Luis Obispo received $28.35 million over the past week as the 2019 allotment of state-mandated funds that will help ease the local public health, safety and economic impacts of the closure of Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
Diablo Canyon Power Plant is scheduled to stop operations no later than 2025. About $9.6 million of the funds received are to be used by the county and incorporated cities for economic development purposes. The remaining $18.75 million will be passed on to over 70 local public agencies, including the San Luis Coastal Unified School District and all incorporated cities, to support essential services that risk losing funding as Diablo Canyon nears closure.
“This is good news for our region as it will allow us to fund important programs and services that will help SLO County mitigate the impacts caused by the closure of Diablo Canyon Power Plant,” said Guy Savage, Assistant County Administrative Officer.
“We look forward to continuing to forge public-private partnerships that will help us maintain essential public services and education services, while also restructuring and building a stable local economy.”
The funding was made possible through Senate Bill (SB) 1090, which was authored by Senator Monning and signed into law by Governor Brown in September 2018 to, in part, ease the local impact of the closure of Diablo Canyon Power Plant. The remaining SB 1090 Essential Services Mitigation Funds (2020-2025) will come annually in the amount of about $9.38 million. Together, the amounts will total the $85 million specified in SB 1090. The County’s portion of these is $3.6 million for Economic Development Funds and $27.9 million in Essential Services Mitigation Funds.
SB 1090 ensured that the community would receive $85 million in Community Impact Mitigation Funds, which are broken into two components: Economic Development Funds ($10 million) and the Essential Services Mitigation Funds ($75 million). Roughly half of the Essential Services Mitigation Funds will go to local schools to maintain critical programs.
For more information, visit www.slocounty.ca.gov.
