Cooling ruling heats up plant war

Opponents of a planned desalination plant in Huntington Beach are hoping a recent federal appeals court ruling about power plant cooling systems will sink the planned facility.

But officials for Poseidon Resources, which intends to operate a desalination facility at the AES-owned Huntington Beach Generating Station on Newland Street, say the Jan. 25 decision by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals won’t stop the plant and may not even slow it down.

The controversy revolves around once-through cooling — a system that runs a substantial amount of water from the ocean through a steam condenser and back out. The power station uses such a system, and the desalination facility is planned to hook up to its cooling towers. But environmentalists decry the system as detrimental to fish and other sea life, which get caught in the intake and die.

In its decision, the federal appellate court in New York ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to rewrite its new rules on power plant cooling systems, saying the agency considered cost too strongly when allowing once-through cooling for existing power plants.

Justices did not directly ban the system in the decision, but they told the EPA to determine the “best available technology” to mitigate the death of ocean wildlife, ignoring cost except in extreme situations. Furthermore, they disallowed replenishment as a solution: Power plants cannot pay to replace destroyed sea life as a way to meet environmental impact requirements — something Huntington Beach officials have suggested before.

Opponents of the plant and its proposed cooling system say they are heartened by the ruling. Once-through cooling will be banned “if you read between the lines,” said Joe Geever, regional manager for the conservation group Surfrider Foundation. He believes closed-loop cooling, which only takes in water to top up its reserves, will likely be the new standard.

The plant “had some hurdles before January,” he said. “Now it’s got a major, major obstacle.”

Poseidon representatives saw it differently, calling the ruling only one step in a long process of appeals and rule changes. The EPA has not yet come out with new rules in compliance with the decision.

“The final answer on that is, good or bad, a long way away,” said Poseidon Resources spokes- man Andrew Kingman. “That will probably take years, and more litigation and more process.”

Even if the system were banned in the future, the Clean Water Act only regulates such systems for power plants — not desalination plants — Kingman said. If the power plant has to shut down, Poseidon Resources has already arranged to buy the cooling system, he said.

That is the letter of the law, but Geever said such a move would thoroughly violate the law’s spirit.

“It would undermine public policy to prohibit the electrical generation industry from killing fish in open ocean intakes, only to have the desalination industry able to do it,” he said.

Buying the cooling system would slow the facility down, Kingman admitted. But he said the company would seek the necessary new land-use permits from the City Council.

Huntington Beach City Council members approved such permits before, and members said they did not expect that vote to change.

One unknown factor is the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Board, which would have to bless the project as well.

The Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board has no official comment at this time, said Ken Theisen, a staff environmental scientist for the board. But the board requires the power plant to hold public hearings quarterly on its compliance with the EPA rules in question, and the next meeting is on April 19.

Residents for Responsible Desalination, a local group opposed to the proposed facility, also plan a public meeting on March 1.

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