Poseidon pushes AES affair

Dave Brooks

It’s as familiar as images get in Huntington Beach: A group gazes

over the side of the Huntington Beach Pier onto surfers below, the

moment immortalized on a sleek glossy flier that looks like so many

others that appear in Surf City mailboxes.

What’s unusual about this piece of literature is its author:

Poseidon Resources, the Stamford, Conn., industrial developer

planning its second push to build a desalination plant behind the AES

power plant near Pacific Coast Highway.

The flier is part of the key public relations component missing

from the developer’s December 2003 attempt, when the council halted

the project in its tracks by rejecting its environmental impact

report, Poseidon Resources Senior Vice President Billy Owens said.

Poseidon recently hired Irvine-based public relations firm M4

Strategies to campaign for approval of the new environmental report,

which could begin publicly circulating by the end of January. City

Planner Ricky Ramos said his department is reviewing the report and

will soon make it available for 45 days of public review.

That could mean a hearing by early spring and a new series of

politically charged council meetings.

Activist and labor organizer John Earl said he has begun

organizing a local task force against the project, and although he

wouldn’t comment on the specifics of his strategy, he said it

involved showing the council that a large number of people in

Huntington Beach oppose Poseidon.

Owens said Poseidon is planning a similar strategy to prove that

Huntington Beach residents want desalination, pointing to a poll of

401 Surf City residents he commissioned by Kelton Research in March

2004. The report said 80% of Huntington Beach residents support a

local desalination facility “to provide a sufficient water supply if

a future water shortage occurs.”

M4 executive Shannon Widor also said the company has begun

distributing postcards and letters of support for the project and

plans “to provide residents with information about when public

meetings on the project are to be held,” he said.

Poseidon didn’t use this strategy in the past because of

instructions it received from former City Manager Ray Silver, Owens

said.

“We were told to work quietly and easily with the city and not

push what the city got out of it,” he said. “If it appeared to be a

foregone conclusion, it would be attacked.”

Since the summer of 2000, Poseidon has expressed interest in

building a desalination facility at the back of the AES power plant.

The $250-million project would use at least 100 million gallons of

water per day after it has passed through the AES cooling system,

separating salt and water molecules through a highly pressurized

membrane filtration system called reverse osmosis.

Owens estimates that 100 million gallons of seawater, when broken

down through this process, would result in 50 million gallons of

potable water and 50 million gallons of sea salt, which would then be

returned to the ocean through the AES outfall pipe along with

additional cooling water from the power plant that wasn’t used by

Poseidon.

Local environmentalists are concerned that the high-density salt

discharge would be harmful to marine life, but Owens said he plans to

present research that indicates the salt will dissipate to normal

levels within a maximum 150-foot radius after discharge.

“The key to our success this time is showing residents that this

is good for Huntington Beach,” said Owens, who added the project will

create 18 full-times jobs, as well as $1.8 million in annual property

taxes.

If the facility is eventually sold to a public agency, which under

law wouldn’t have to pay property taxes, he said he would require a

clause to the purchase requiring the agency to pay $1.8 million

annually through an in-lieu fee.

Not everyone is convinced. Councilwoman Debbie Cook, a member of

the state Water Desalination Task Force, said she hasn’t written off

desalination technology but doesn’t like Poseidon’s involvement in

the project.

“It’s the privatization of water,” she said. “And Poseidon is the

middle man in all of this. They are simply adding cost.”

She said she would rather see the Municipal Water District of

Orange County pursuing a project, but Poseidon has a long-term lease

on the AES site, one of the only feasible locations in the county

because of the presence of the company’s intake and outfall pipes.

Although there is no formal deal to sell desalinated water to the

district, Owens said he is confident the district would buy the water

and maybe even resell some of it to the Huntington Beach Water

Department.

“[The Municipal Water District] is talking to us quietly, but not

officially,” he said.

* DAVE BROOKS covers City Hall. He can be reached at (714)

966-4609 or by e-mail at dave.brooks@latimes.com.