OXNARD : Panel OKd to Study Desalination Plant

A small but affluent Oxnard beach community took a step this week toward building Ventura County’s first desalination plant.

Directors of the Channel Islands Beach Community Service District on Monday voted to appoint a citizens panel charged with evaluating district plans to build either a $40-million regional facility or a $9.6-million local plant.

The reverse-osmosis facility would remove salt from brackish ground water to supply the district’s 9,000 residents.

The district, which serves the unincorporated beach communities of Silver Strand, Hollywood Beach and Hollywood by the Sea, now obtains all of the 1,000 acre-feet of water it uses annually from deep underground basins called aquifers.

But the threat of seawater intrusion into the fresh-water aquifers prompted the district to join Port Hueneme and the U. S. Navy in a $175,000 study of alternative sources of drinking water.

The Navy and Port Hueneme will decide within a month whether to proceed with another $200,000 study that would produce preliminary design engineering, an environmental report and a study of brackish water sources.

Under terms of a joint operating agreement, Port Hueneme would pay 60% of the costs to plan and build a regional plant, and the Navy and Channel Islands would each pay 20%.

But Channel Islands directors left little doubt Monday that, barring unexpected obstacles, the district will build a desalination plant regardless of whether the neighboring agencies participate.

“If the Navy and Port Hueneme don’t come on board in April . . . we go it alone,” said James A. Antonioli, the board’s vice president.