Congratulations Arroyo Grande, California. You just elected Homer Simpson as your mayor.
New numbers from the San Luis Obispo County Clerk's office show write-in candidate Jim Hill has ousted 12-year incumbent Tony Ferrara in the race for Arroyo Grande mayor.
Hill received 3090 write-in votes to Ferrara's 2995 vote, a difference of 95 votes. There were 26 other write in votes.
The city of Arroyo Grande was the center of a lot of controversy leading up to this election. The city manager was investigated for being in his office after hours with an employee but a city investigation found no wrong-doing. Some members of the community argued there should have been an independent investigation and the police union made a vote of non-confidence in Mayor Ferrara.
Hill initiated his write-in campaign during that turmoil, and eventually the city manager announced his resignation pending the city finding a replacement for him. A second investigation into the situation with the city manager is being conducted. The city is scheduled to hear an update on that investigation Wednesday.
more at this link: http://www.ksby.com/news/jim-hill-takes-arroyo-grande-mayor-s-race/
More about this candidate, now mayor. http://votersedge.org/california/2014/november/arroyo-grande/candidates/mayor/17671-jim-hill#.VGva5hwql5c
Jim Hill is a former nuclear engineer from our esteemed El Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.
His campaign consisted of what looked like homemade signs plastered all over town, except that the signs all looked the same, like they were mass produced. Jumping people with signs were at street corners and in front of markets and shopping centers on weekends. That's a lot of volunteers in a small town like Arroyo Grande.
I'm curious where the money to fund this write in candidate came from. I doubt if it was local. With dark money these days, who knows? The candidate/winner was interviewed on the TVee last night and he was pretty inarticulate IMHO blathering about sewer problems. I understand there were sewer problems in 2010 and they were pretty much resolved by 2012.
I wish I had the resources and credentials to investigate this. This is an oil producing area and the companies are itching to frack. Could this tryst between the City Manager and a colleague after hours in City Hall have given those deep pockets an opportunity to jump in with a puppet write in candidate in one of the five cities area that they might be looking to take over
with city government more cooperative to issuing permits without too many question?
Are there any reporters in the area who might want to dig deeper? Inquiring minds really want to know.
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's absolutely out of sight, security is unsurpassed, and great attention is paid to preventing harm to the various sea critters that live in the water near the cooling water intakes and outflows.
The plant produces 2,240 Megawatts of Carbon Free baseload power, 24/7.
It's the second largest powerplant in the state and generates almost 10% of all our electricity.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/nuclear/california.html
It's safe from earthquakes: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/PGE-Diablo-Canyon-Nuclear-Plant-is-Earthquake-Safe-Despite-Newly-Detected
Now, I'm not in favor of building any new old-technology plants, but tearing down any good ones right now will only lead to burning more natural gas.
However, the seismologists at Cal-Tech seem to think differently.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? Putting the foxes in charge of the hen house seems to apply here.
Here is something to read: http://ecowatch.com/2014/09/06/california-fukushima-diablo-nuclear/2/
The nuclear industry would immediately deny all health impacts. It would blame “unpredictable” God and nature.
But a 42-page report from NRC inspector Dr. Michael Peck says new fault line discoveries challenge Diablo’s “presumption of nuclear safety.”
Buried by the NRC for at least a year, it was released by Friends of the Earth and reported on by the Associated Press and the great enviro-journalist Karl Grossman, as well as by the Nuclear Information & Resource Service and Beyond Nuclear.
Peck has a doctorate in nuclear engineering and was Diablo’s chief on-site inspector for five years. He’s now a senior instructor at the NRC’s Technical Training Center in Tennessee. His status as a current NRC employee makes such a critical report highly unusual—and alarming.
Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen has warned about sea-level intake pipes like those at Diablo. When the tsunami struck Fukushima, he writes, “The cooling equipment along the shoreline was turned into a scrap yard of twisted metal.”
Then there is fire.
Diablo Canyon, writes David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, “has never, ever complied with fire safety regulations, not even for a second by mistake.”
“The one-two punch of earthquake/tsunami caused Fukushima,” Lochbaum wrote in an email to me.
“A one-two punch of earthquake/fire could cause Diablo Canyon.”
Especially not in places like Sac, the sunniest place on Earth that isn't in a desert.
I put together a 500kW project not far from Sacramento.
I'd be happy to tell you about it offline.
As to Diablo, it's a solid plant, I've had the full behind the scenes tour more than once, all over the turbine decks, control rooms, up to the storage tanks and down to the training center, it's very impressive.
But they refused to take me into the BRTs. 
There's every reason not to build another one, but no reason to take this one offline right now.
Once it is finally decommissioned, we can start using the Helms Pumped Storage facility to store wind energy!
It is laced with hundreds of miles of canals like these in India.
