Council should spike Poseidon

Plenty is being read into the Huntington Beach City Council’s narrow

4-3 decision to approve the environmental report for the Poseidon

desalination plant. Some say it looks likely that the same majority

will OK the final project later this fall. Others think the plan

might get derailed, if not by the council then by the California

Coastal Commission.

All that will remain conjecture until the council’s decision. What

shouldn’t happen now is for too much to be read into what already has

happened.

It is not unexpected that the council would approve the

environmental report. That decision, after all, can be seen narrowly

as concerning whether the report adequately addresses problems that

the plant might generate. More importantly, it also may not have been

the best time for anti-Poseidon forces to gain a victory.

Opponents of the desalination plant need to remember that the

council’s decision last week was solely about the environmental

report. Turning it down would have allowed Poseidon to return with a

new report, as in fact it already had. Denying the plant’s

conditional-use permit would be a more direct, undeniable signal

about the council’s opinion.

To repeat our earlier stand: The council should turn down this

proposal. As we have written before, southeast Huntington Beach

already is unfairly burdened with the ASCON site, the Orange County

Sanitation District and the AES plant. Enough industry here is

enough.

Under city law, the council is well within its rights, for these

reasons, to turn this project down. It is not compatible with the

direction the area is developing -- away from industry and toward

tourism-based businesses and homes with high property values -- and

it will hurt the welfare of the area -- specifically by holding back

the very development that most benefits the city and certainly will

benefit it far more than any tax revenue from the desalination plant.

Those facts need to be foremost in council members’ minds as they

approach their final decision. If they are, the decision should be an

easy one.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

What is the most compelling reason to support or oppose the

Poseidon desalination plant? Call our Readers Hotline at (714)

966-4691 or send e-mail to o7hbindependent@latimes.comf7. Please

spell your name and include your hometown and phone number for

verification purposes.