The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps in 2015 denied that the California Coastal Commission had the authority to issue a permit for oceanside storage of additional spent reactor fuel from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), a newly disclosed letter shows.

In the Oct. 1, 2015, letter to commission environmental scientist Joseph Street, Navy Capt. W.L. Whitmire noted that SONGS was built on a federal easement authorized by Congress in 1963 at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton near San Diego. The 25,000-square-foot concrete storage pad and 75 fuel storage modules covered by the permit would be installed completely on that land, according to Whitmire.

“It is the Navy’s and USMC’s position that the California Coastal Commission lacks jurisdiction to require or issue a Coastal Development Permit (CDP) for actions at the SONGS site,” says the letter, made public this week by the nongovernmental group Public Watchdogs.

Nonetheless, the state commission just days later, on Oct. 6, 2015, approved the 20-year permit for Southern California Edison, the primary owner of the closed nuclear power plant. The spent fuel storage plan has since then faced multiple legal challenges, most recently from Public Watchdogs.

In a memo submitted to the commission members one day before its decision, Street and Coastal Commission Deputy Director Alison Detmer addressed the issues raised by the Navy letter. They said the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1987, in the lawsuit California Coastal Commission v. Granite Rock Co., that the federal Coastal Zone Management Act does not uniformly take precedent over state authority under the California Coastal Act regarding private activities on federal land.

Whitmire had addressed the Supreme Court ruling in his letter, saying the Granite Rock case involved federal land under proprietorial jurisdiction in which state law generally applied, while the SONGS property falls under federal jurisdiction in which state law largely does not apply.

“We disagree with the Navy’s position, but even if they’re right that means the waste gets to stay there without any oversight by the state of California,” Coastal Commission spokeswoman Noaki Schwartz said by email Thursday. “Unfortunately, if the Navy is correct, this doesn’t mean the storage facility would not be built but that it would be built without any environmental conditions by the Coastal Commission such as the 20 year permit limit and sea level rise analysis.”

There was no immediate word on whether the Navy pressed its case after the commission approved the permit more than two years ago. Officials at Camp Pendleton did not provide comment by deadline for RadWaste Monitor.

SONGS closed permanently in 2013 due to problems with steam generators installed in its two operating reactors, Units 2 and 3. The state permit was necessary to move all remaining used fuel from the reactors from wet storage into dry storage, building a new independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) adjacent to the existing pad that holds fuel from the long-retired Unit 1.

In total, about 3.5 million pounds of waste would be held in dry-cask storage units on the SONGS property. In a press release, Public Watchdogs said Southern California Edison completed the new ISFSI in November and would soon begin moving spent fuel out of storage pools. The transfer to dry storage is due to be completed in 2019, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

While Southern California Edison has touted the safety and security of the Holtec International fuel storage system to be used for the additional fuel, local stakeholders have warned against placing radioactive material in an earthquake-prone area just 100 feet from the Pacific coast.

The watchdog group Citizens’ Oversight in November 2015 sued the commission to block the permit. The sides in August of this year settled the state lawsuit, with Southern California Edison receiving approval to move all of SONGS’ spent fuel into on-site dry storage while pledging to take a number of steps to find an off-site location for the waste.

In November, however, La Mesa-based Public Watchdogs filed a separate lawsuit to block the spent-fuel storage along the coast. Defendants in that case, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, are the United States of America; Defense Secretary James Mattis; the U.S. Navy and Navy Secretary Richard Spencer; Southern California Edison; and SONGS co-owner San Diego Gas & Electric.