Mailbag: Desalinated water is not necessary

Mesa Water District board member Shawn Dewane is wrong in almost all of the assumptions and assertions in his letter “Desalinated water is a necessary step” (Aug. 13).

First, I dispute the findings of a self-serving survey that shows that water customers in our area would pay any annual rate increase to support the planned Poseidon desalination plant in Huntington Beach. In fact, most ratepayers are hopping mad that such a fleecing is even being proposed.

Our groundwater replenishment system in Orange County produced 70 million gallons of potable water a day when it went online in 2008, and it can be expanded to far outproduce the proposed desalination plant — with less energy and cost involved.

Desalination is not needed in north Orange County, and Dewane knows it. He is among Poseidon’s partisan allies. His viewpoint is totally biased and should be rejected.

Conservation and our outstanding groundwater replenishment capabilities are far better solutions than the billion-dollar boondoggle of a desalination plant being pushed by its promoters. Desalinated water is not a “necessary step.”

Tim Geddes

Huntington Beach

*

Irresponsible people are the problem, not plastic bags

I don’t know where Linda Kline has been, but it is quite apparent, from my interpretation of her letter, that she just crawled out from under a rock covered with plastic bags and took a drive on the Coast Highway, where, by the way, the trash is regularly disposed of by Caltrans folks (“Plastic bags pile up, mar the city,” July 30).

I drive down Pacific Coast Highway every day, from Warner Avenue to Newport Beach, and the area she alludes to has been a blight even during Huntington Beach’s ban on plastic bags. Perhaps it would behoove her to take her soapbox and misinformation to the state parks, where folks visit from out of town and have no regard for the environment.

As I have said before many times, irresponsible folks will do what they want. Don’t blame the “forward-looking” council but rather the uneducated and irresponsible people. This is no different from gun control, immigration or other areas where the irresponsible do what they want.

Education is the key, not laws. And if you have laws, enforce them. Don’t blame the council and kick the can down the road on PCH into the weeds.

Drew Kovacs

Huntington Beach