Gov. Newsom & Sen. Boxer: climate-change posers who lost to grassroots enviros
Corporate money and arrogance aren't always enough to win. The failed Poseidon ocean desalination campaign would prove it.
See Part I, Part 2, and Part 3 for context.
At the Sacramento Press Club, on Sept. 27, 2017, I had just asked former Sen. Barbara Boxer if Brookfield-Poseidon’s proposed $1.4 billion Huntington Beach ocean desalination plant was a scam.
Quick review, Boxer’s response was that:
she knew nothing about the cost of Poseidon’s water;
Orange County Water District wants the project;
salmon fishery owners and farmers “were almost tearing each other’s eyes out” over water (therefore, we need Poseidon’s desal plant);
San Diego County loves Poseidon’s ocean desalination plant in Carlsbad;
she is the greatest environmentalist in California history;
we need ocean desalination/Poseidon to fight climate change;
Without desal/Poseidon dams will be built “all over the state” and people will line up to buy bottled water, if they can afford it.
In an op-ed piece published two weeks later in the Union-Tribune, Boxer again dismissed major environmental groups “as a handful of isolated voices,” former supporters of hers, “who refuse to accept sound science and prepare in the face of climate change” in order to oppose “the most environmentally sound desalination plant in the world.”
About that time, 19 of those “few isolated” environmental-protection organizations sent a letter to the State Lands Commission, chaired by Poseidon supporter Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking it not to continue Poseidon’s 2010 issued sublease at its upcoming Oct. 19, 2017 public hearing.
But the Commission’s project approval was already in the bag as Newsom and SLC legal staff adopted a narrow scope of project review.
Instead of discussing project need, alternatives, and broader environmental issues—in accordance with Article 10 of the California Constitution, the commission would strictly consider a lease amendment to add a required brine-diffuser to the proposed desal plant.
Despite Newsom’s instructions, both proponents and opponents talked during public comments about the broader issues. They wanted to lay a foundation in their favor for future regulatory hearings with the State Water Board and the California Coastal Commission.
Boos for Boxer
Newsom scolded members of the audience for booing Boxer as she approached the podium to make her comments just after a collective presentation by Maloni and several members of the Orange County Water District.
Acknowledging her respect for “everybody’s views,” except Poseidon critics “who call themselves environmentalists,” she again bragged about her own credentials.
“I want to say that for my whole career I’ve been an environmentalist and I took the lead on climate change,” she said. Ten years ago she knew that “we’re going to be hit with droughts, fires, [and] all the awful things we’re seeing in the country.”
But “honest to God,” she didn’t understand “how people could stand against a project that’s going to give us mitigation when it comes to safe drinking water supply” that is used around the world.
In Puerto Rico, “People are drinking water out of superfund sites. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of this panel, we have to step up,” she warned.
Near the end of the hearing, just before the vote of approval, Chairman Newsom lamented that he hadn’t cut off a “few people that took personal shots” at Boxer during public comments.
“I was a resident of Marin County when she was a champion of the environment,” he added, “before it was even in people’s mindset…And I don’t know a more fierce and moreover successful champion of the environment in the United States of America than Senator Barbara Boxer.”
Newsom wanted to defend Boxer’s long standing reputation, he said. “You know, good people can disagree, but I don’t want to undermine or impun her integrity in this process.”
In Freudian terms, Newsom might have been projecting; as it turned out, he had plenty of Poseidon and other environmental conflicts of his own.
After Poseidon, Boxer, now America’s greatest environmentalist and self-professed champion of the working class and human rights, would continue working on the issues that she loved.
She did that by lobbying for corporate clients like Lyft (to suppress the rights of rideshare drivers) and Hikvision, a Chinese company blacklisted by the U.S. government for “repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance.”
Next: Answering Boxer’s desal assertions; state water board bows to Newsom/Boxer/Poseidon; how San Diego County residents love their desal plant now.
Also coming soon: reports, analysis, and commentary about the Cardenas scandal; arrogance led to the SDCWA budget debacle; obit for another great SoCal water warrior