Council OKs Desalination Plant Study for Ventura : Water: Residents favored construction in an advisory vote last week. The facility would be one of the largest outside of the Middle East.

The Ventura City Council decided Monday to abide by the voters’ wishes and move forward with building a seawater desalination plant.

In a non-binding measure last week, Ventura residents voted 55% to 45% in favor of constructing a plant to desalt 7,000 acre-feet of water a year. An acre-foot is enough water to serve two families of four for a year.

Ventura’s facility is expected to be one of the largest and costliest municipal seawater desalination plants outside the Middle East. A city-ordered engineering study has estimated that it would cost $30.4 million a year for 30 years to build and maintain the facility.

There are only five desalination plants in the state, and two are temporarily shut down, said Shelley Jones, the city’s director of public works. The active plants are at Gaviota, Diablo Canyon and Catalina Island. The others are in Santa Barbara and Morro Bay.

The council voted 5 to 2 to hire an outside consultant to study where the plant should be built, how much it will cost and how it will operate. It also decided to continue consulting a previously formed citizens water advisory committee.

The vote was not a final decision to build the plant, but indicates that the council favors the project.

Councilman James L. Monahan, who has been a vocal supporter of installing a state water pipeline instead, and Councilman Jack Tingstrom cast the dissenting votes.

“I suggest we put it on the ballot again,” Monahan said before the meeting. He said the vote was too close to be considered a mandate and favors a second, binding ballot initiative. In July, he opposed making last week’s advisory vote binding.

Tingstrom voted against the motion because he did not think the citizens committee needed to be included in the process.

In separate interviews before the meeting, the rest of the council said they felt obligated to go ahead with the desalination project because they had pledged to support voters’ wishes on the advisory measure. Before the election, only three members of the council had publicly supported desalination over construction of a state water pipeline.

“I think the voters have made a statement,” Mayor Gregory L. Carson said.

City Manager John Baker said it would be at least three years before a desalination plant could be operational and that, in any case, it is not yet definite that the city will actually build a plant.

Cost and environmental issues are the two big hurdles the desalination project faces, and council members may later change their minds if they don’t like the results of preliminary studies, Baker said.

“The council can still stop something along the way,” he said. “It is not committed to a contract to build a desalination plant. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet.”

Councilman Tom Buford, another state water supporter, said he still has some reservations about the cost and environmental issues involved in building a large desalination plant.

“It’s going to be complicated and we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Buford said. “I’m not convinced that desalination is the best alternative, but it’s what the people want.”

Tim Downey, a city planning commissioner who led the desalination campaign, said, “A desalination option makes sense for coastal communities. . . . It relieves the pressure on the state water system, and lets the water be made available to inland communities who do not have access to alternative water sources.”

The council is expected to decide later whether to continue paying $800,000 a year to maintain its option to draw on state water supplies. A water advisory committee has recommended that the city wait until the desalination plant is built before giving up its rights to state water.

Voters last week were asked whether the city should build a pipeline to bring in 9,000 acre-feet of water a year at an annual cost of $24.2 million for 30 years, or whether the city should construct a desalination plant that would produce 7,000 acre-feet of water a year at an annual cost of $30.4 million for 30 years.

Ongoing costs would be $15.7 million a year for desal and $10.8 a year for state water.

Last week, 22,250 Ventura residents voted for desalination and 18,182 cast ballots for state water. In addition, the final results of 1,800 absentee ballots are expected to be released this afternoon.