Poseidon sets bad example for coast

Is it time to let the battle over the Poseidon desalination plant end? No, of course not. The war has just begun.

With the Coastal Commission finding “substantial issue” with the Huntington Beach City Council’s approval of the project, appeals to the Coastal Commission are just beginning, and the Surfrider Foundation and the Sierra Club have also filed a lawsuit challenging the adequacy of the environmental report.

There may be a place and time for responsible desalination projects along the California coast, but the Poseidon project is not one of them. It is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Huntington Beach is not the right place because of the persistent bacterial pollution problems at this precise section of the beach. Note that AES is diverting its bacterial-laden runoff downstream of the Poseidon connection to the cooling system so that the desalination plant doesn’t have to deal with this pollution. Instead, the bacterial pollution is concentrated by the discharge and sent right out the discharge pipe to circulate back to the beach within an hour. It’s no surprise to me why the beach is so polluted at this section at Magnolia Street.

Poseidon’s additional discharge of concentrated brine and chemicals are contrary to the city’s Local Coastal Program policies, which permit no degradation of ocean water quality.

Meanwhile, the State Lands Commission and California Ocean Protection Council have recently passed resolutions condemning the once-through cooling systems at coastal power plants like the AES plant. These single-pass cooling systems are being outlawed because of the destructive effects they have on marine life. Whatever is left of marine life after passing through the power-plant generators will be wiped out by the desalination plant.

Responsible desalination plants will use below-sand beach wells like the Dana Point project, where the water intakes will be about a hundred feet below the sand. Such technology will not harm marine life like the entrainment and impingement that occurs with the AES and Poseidon plant’s once-through cooling system.

The Poseidon technology is outdated even before it gets started, and should be soundly rejected by the Coastal Commission and the courts. It sets a bad example of desalination along the California coast.