MAILBAG:

While I applaud Forrest Bonner’s interest in water conservation (“New water sources needed,” Mailbag, May 29), he is completely misguided in his apparent support for the proposed desalination facility here in Huntington Beach.

First of all, water expert Dorothy Green estimates Southern Californians are misusing or wasting up to half of our current water assets. That leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Second, contrary to Bonner’s statement, the Huntington Beach City Council majority did approve Poseidon’s bid to co-locate a desalination facility with the AES power plant. That bid is still hung up in legal challenges and regulatory red tape. Many in our city, including the local nonprofit group Residents for Responsible Desalination, oppose Poseidon’s plans to utilize the AES “once through cooling” system to help operate its facility. This system destroys marine life and would add pollution to our ocean. In addition, Poseidon has been vague, evasive and disingenuous in its dealings with the public to date. Other desalination alternatives to Poseidon’s plans are available that are more efficient and less destructive to our coastal environment.

Third, the energy costs to produce desalinated water under Poseidon’s plans would make its product prohibitively expensive. Even with misbegotten subsidies, the costs would double or triple. Groundwater Replenishment System implementation, wastewater recycling and treatment strategies, and other less energy-intensive methods of enhancing our water assets should be our first priority.

All of our citizens should become informed and educated about water issues and how we are affected by what is being proposed to deal with them.

Tim Geddes

Huntington Beach

 EDITOR’S NOTE: Tim Geddes is a board member of Residents for Responsible Desalination and a 25-year resident of Southeast Huntington Beach, where the proposed Poseidon facility would be sited.

Treated water less costly than desalination

I would like to respond to Forrest Bonner’s letter “New water sources needed,” (May 29). Forrest Bonner, you deserve a huge “thank you” for all that you do to conserve water.

Few realize that water itself is cheap. It’s the delivery of water that is costly and will become more so. And Bonner is right: Conservation alone will not solve water shortages, and we do indeed need to be looking for new sources. Where I would direct your attention would be to reclamation and water retention. Millions of gallons of water are lost each day to the ocean, treated water, from sanitation district facilities up and down our coast. This water can be treated (reclaimed) at one-tenth the cost of desalinizing water from the ocean. Luckily for residents of Huntington Beach, the world’s largest reclamation/groundwater replenishment project is in Fountain Valley. It comes with a very important caveat to your pocketbook. It is publicly owned. If you are at all concerned with future prices of water and energy, wait until water is privatized. If you remember Enron, you already know what happens.

Conservation, retention, reclamation, recycling and better management of the water we do have, are solutions, not Band-Aids, to our water problems. Desalination is definitely a technology on the rise and is improving but is not yet a viable nor cost effective solution. Importantly, none of the real and viable solutions involve the killing of marine life, nor the dumping of chemical waste and concentrated brine back into that living, breathing entity we call our ocean. Desalination does all three.

Visit the Residents for Responsible Desalination website at www.R4RD.org and get involved.

Merle Moshiri

President, Residents for Responsible Desalination

Huntington Beach

Rohrabacher’s support of toll road disappointing

Dana Rohrabacher has done it again. He has written a letter supporting the Transportation Corridor Agency in its appeal to the Department of Commerce to override the Coastal Commission’s denial of the Toll Road 241. This road has so many things against it that the Coastal Commission denied it.

1. The Coastal Commission’s purpose is to protect the Coastal Act. This road did not take into consideration any alternatives that were offered. Thereby violating the Coastal Act.

2. The road threatened two endangered species.

3. There are Native American burial grounds in the path

4. There’s a public campground that is used by hundreds of people.

The Coastal Commission had many public hearings where 3,500 people all spoke asking the commission to deny the project.

What is the congressman thinking to write a letter of support?

Remember in November what kind of a representative he has been for the people of Huntington Beach. Vote for Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook.

Eileen Murphy