Desalination fight begins

Jenny Marder

After four hours of debate, the Planning Commission on Tuesday night

postponed a decision on the proposed Poseidon desalination plant

until next week.

In a chamber packed with residents, Poseidon Resources Corp. was

met with overwhelming opposition from the public and a barrage of

questions from the Planning Commission about its proposal to build

the largest desalination plant in the country in Southeast Huntington

Beach.

“I applaud the commission for spending so much time on it because

we didn’t take that much time with the sanitation district and we

didn’t with AES,” said Stephanie Barger, executive director of the

Earth Resources Foundation, an environmental group based in Costa

Mesa. “The decision they make now will affect future generations for

the next hundred years.”

The vote was to approve the environmental impact report, the

conditional use permit and coastal development permit for the

project.

Critics of the plant said at Tuesday’s meeting that they feared it

would be harmful to coastal marine life and a blight on an already

over-industrialized area. They also feared that the outfall from the

plant would worsen already compromised water quality.

“Huntington Beach depends on the quality of its water and the

quality of its beaches,” said Jan Vandersloot, one of the founders of

the activist Ocean Outfall Group. “I don’t see how in good conscience

you could improve the environmental impact report at this time.”

Desalination is the process of removing salt from ocean water to

produce drinking water. The Poseidon plant would turn out 50 million

gallons of fresh water a day, enough to feed 112,000 families, boosting the region’s overall supply.

With water shortages worldwide, suppliers everywhere are

tightening the hold on their reserves. Earlier this year, the Orange

County Water District, Surf City’s main water source, cut back on the

amount of water that cities and agencies can draw from the its

groundwater basin. This year, the Colorado River cut back on the

amount of surplus water it doles out to the district.

These actions, coupled with the last four years of drought, have

people scrounging for other alternatives.

People have traditionally depended on lakes, rivers and

groundwater to fill their water glasses -- resources that make up

only 3% of the water on the planet. Over the past decade, water

experts have been increasingly turning to the ocean as a water

source.

Slated to be built on 11 acres adjacent to the AES power plant,

the Poseidon plant would pull from the power plant’s daily intake of

ocean water. Using a treatment called reverse osmosis, seawater would

be forced at high pressure through plastic membranes that separate

water molecules from salt and other constituents.

“Water comes out on one side, and bigger particles, salt and other

solids, stay behind,” said Billy Owens, vice president of Poseidon.

For every two gallons of seawater it takes in, the plant would

produce one gallon of potable water, and deposit another gallon of

saltwater back into the ocean through AES.

The freshwater would be sent through a 10-mile pipeline to the

Mesa Consolidated Water District in Costa Mesa. From there, it would

be distributed to water districts or cities in Orange County.

Many raised concerns on Tuesday night about how the heavily

concentrated saltwater, known as brine, would affect coastal marine

life. The product water released back into the ocean would be diluted

with outfall from the power plant and therefore less salty than one

would expect, Owens said.

Seawater is 3.5% salt. After desalination, the resulting brine is

7%, or double the amount of salt. But the 50 million gallons a day

that would be returned to the AES would be mixed with the

400-million-gallon outfall from the power plant, diluting it.

“It’s being diluted with other cooling water going into the

ocean,” Owens said. “The water that finally touches the ocean is 4%

to 6% [salt].”

.

Poseidon must obtain a permit from the Santa Ana Regional Water

Quality Control Board, which governs the discharge. It is the

agency’s job to ensure that the brine discharge complies with the

Federal Clean Water Act.

“Anything we put back into the ocean, we have to file and get

approval by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board,”

Owens said. “They will determine whether what we do is safe.”

Some residents also objected to building an industrial plant so

close to the 45 acres purchased this month by Huntington Beach

Wetlands Conservancy to be restored as wetlands.

Poseidon Resources Corp. has already built a plant in Tampa, Fla.

that is half the size of the proposed Huntington Beach plant. The

Tampa plant began delivering drinking water May 1 of this year.

If the plant passes on Tuesday, Poseidon must secure approval from

the City Council, the California Coastal Commission and the State

Regional Water Quality Control Board. Owens hopes construction will

begin in June or July 2004. It would take about two years to

complete.

The Planning Commission will vote at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the City

Council chambers.

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at jenny.marder@latimes.com.