Poseidon Town: OC Water District Backs Big-Ag Ballot Initiative that Helps Big Desal

OCWD denies that 'More Water Now' proposition would bypass environmental protection laws and fund its desalination dream

For 10 years the Orange County Water District (OCWD), which manages the county’s groundwater basin, has obsessed over creating a public/private business partnership with Poseidon Water to free itself from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET).

And it’s still sinking: Photo from U.S. Geological Survey

OCWD buys untreated water from the MET for about $800 an acre-foot and uses it to refill the basin, which supplies 2.5 million north-county residents with 75 percent of their water.

Poseidon wants to build a $1.4 billion ocean desalination plant in Huntington Beach and sell OCWD 56,000 acre-feet of desalinated water a year. That would replace an equal amount of OCWD’s imported MET water (enabling a $400 million grant from MET to help Poseidon) at 3-4 times the price, for 30-50 years, regardless of need.

A 2018 study by the Municipal Water District of Orange County, MET’s conduit for water sales to OCWD, put the Poseidon project last on its list of needed water-reliabi…