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.
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