Speakers Say No to Plan for Desalination

Dozens of speakers lined up Monday night to express their opposition to a plan by a private firm to build a $250-million desalination plant in Huntington Beach.

The City Council was expected to vote on both the environmental impact report and the conditional-use permit for the facility, which would be built next to the AES power generating plant on Pacific Coast Highway. But public comment on the project extended the council meeting well into the night. Poseidon Resources, a private company based in Connecticut, wants to build the plant next to AES to give it access to the power plant’s water intake and discharge system.

The council delayed voting on the project last month amid questions about its economic feasibility, environmental impact and whether a public resource, the ocean, should be tapped by a private operation.

Joe Geever, Southern California regional manager for the Surfrider Foundation, said the environmental activist group is not opposed to desalination. The concern, he said, is that the project’s environmental impact report does not adequately address the potential harm to ocean life.

“There are numerous pressures causing the destruction of healthy marine ecosystems,” he said. “We can’t afford the marine life mortality that coastal generators contribute now, much less afford attaching [a second] facility that will just exacerbate the current problems.”

Supporters, however, say that the desalination plant, which would remove salt from ocean water, would be one of the largest in the nation. It would produce up to 50 million gallons of fresh water daily, which they say will help accommodate the population growth in south Orange County, protect the groundwater basin from overuse and provide a reliable source of water during droughts.

Critics counter that the private project is not economically feasible and could further damage the waters off Huntington Beach, which have been plagued with high levels of bacteria for several years.

The California Energy Commission had recommended that the city reject the project because, according to the commission staff, the environmental report is incomplete and based on inaccurate assumptions and obsolete marine studies.

If the city rejects the proposal, the likelihood that the Orange County Water District will pursue a partnership between government and industry to develop a desalination plant grows considerably.

The agency manages the county’s groundwater basin, which supplies half the water needs of 2.3 million people in northern, central and coastal Orange County.

District officials view desalination as a way to lessen demand on the groundwater supply, preventing further saltwater intrusion.

If the water district, a government agency, gets involved, the city would lose its ability to stop the project. State law exempts government water projects from local planning and zoning authority.

Orange County Water District officials have already explored a joint effort with the Municipal Water District of Orange County for a desalination plant that could be built at the AES site.