MAILBAG - Feb. 1, 2007

Poseidon poses problems

Thanks to Vic Leipzig for a highly informative commentary concerning the AES power plant (“Fate of the AES power plant hangs in the balance,” Jan. 25-Feb. 1).

I find the weekly articles by Vic Leipzig and Lou Murray to be one of the better features of the Independent. Vic frets that only one eight-pound fish a day is sucked into the AES ocean intake, which comports with statements of oceanographic experts who were paid to present the best case for Poseidon. These experts testify that the ocean off of Huntington Beach is essentially an aquatic desert. Nonetheless, there is other testimony by long-term Huntington Beach residents that fish once abounded in the nearby ocean.

Unfortunately, this resident testimony is rejected by AES supporters. For example, a study on the AES Huntington Beach Generating Station seeks to show through a complex regression analysis that a scant number of fish are destroyed by the power plant intake because so few fish larvae ever grow to adulthood. However, that same report (pages 167-68), notes that from 1951 to 1995, macrozooplankton biomass decreased by 80%. In other words, commencing in 1951 when mega-sized, ocean-cooled power plants first were placed along the coast between San Diego and Los Angeles, planktonic larvae have been reduced by an enormous amount. I imagine that the situation is even worse today. Can we step back from this destruction of the lifeblood of our ocean? I submit that we can and should.

I observe the AES plant daily. During the past few months, it appears to be almost entirely idle. Is it still an essential facility, the life of which must be extended, thanks in large part to Poseidon? Moreover, is Poseidon water essential for our use, or is it meant to enable southern Orange County development? If so, as one writer has suggested, let them hook up Poseidon to the atomic plant on the San Diego-Orange County border, where there may be an interest in state-of-the-art technology.

Remember, if a huge water plant is built in Huntington Beach, then our existing, relatively cheap water ultimately will be mixed with the highly expensive Poseidon water. Inevitably, Poseidon will seek to double or triple its output, and the ratepayers and householders of Huntington Beach then will subsidize developers of housing tracts in the southern desert foothills of Orange County.

Please, it is not too late to just say no to Poseidon.

Paul Cross

Huntington Beach

Sea life needs better protection

As president of Residents for Responsible Desalination, I would like to respond to Vic Leipzig’s remark of “only eight pounds of fish per day” being sucked into the intake pipe at the AES power plant. Mr. Leipzig’s figures come from AES sampling, not from the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.

According to Ken Theisen, staff environmental scientist for the above-mentioned board, “There could be between 2.8 and 68 metric tons per year of aquatic organism impinged at the AES plant per year.” In actuality, then, we are talking about grinding up a good 400-pound swordfish every day by the AES intake.

There are better ways, better technology available to protect sea life and our beaches. AES should be made to live up to the higher standards that are being required by the state. Their attempts to mitigate their destruction of sea life by pumping money into wetlands restoration, while admirable, do nothing to mitigate the fact that their technology is out of date and destructive, and will continue just as it is, especially if the Poseidon water desalination plant is allowed to use the AES facility in its water-treatment process. Poseidon can only operate with the once-through cooling process that AES employs.

California has always led the way for the rest of the nation in water treatment. Now is not the time to regress to justify corporate greed.

Merle Moshiri

Huntington Beach

Poseidon concerns hold water

The two responses to my original letter (“Poseidon supporters need all the facts,” Jan. 11-18) in the Jan. 18 “Mailbag” clearly show the divergent attitudes the two sides have on the Poseidon desalination plant project.

Opponents of the project, like Drew Kovacs, are presenting facts and a clear rationale for why Poseidon is wrong for our city and our residents. Supporters of the project, like Bob Polkow, are reduced to unsubstantiated criticisms, half-baked analogies, and gratuitous insults.

It is time for the specious contention that Poseidon opponents are somehow anti-progress to finally be refuted and laid to rest.

Any progress experienced by Huntington Beach in the future will come in spite of the Poseidon project and not because of it. The concerns about the project are compelling and overwhelming to anyone not in cahoots with the applicant and their backers.

For project supporters to simply dismiss these concerns out of hand with either sunny optimism or jaundiced distain shows that it is they who lack an understanding of this project’s overall impacts.

Progress is measured not only by how much is done to a community but how much is done for it. It is high time for us to put people over profits and to tell Poseidon to pollute somewhere else. That would be my idea of “moving forward.”

Tim Geddes

Huntington Beach