Post Poseidon: A better blueprint for the future of ocean desalination in California
Future desalination projects should be transparent, environmentally friendly and just, and needed
By Conner Everts
When the California Coastal Commission’s executive director, Jack Ainsworth, gave staff’s final rebuttal to Poseidon Water’s failed plea for approval of its proposed Huntington Beach ocean desalination plant (May 12), he proposed a blueprint that State regulators could use to evaluate future desalination proposals:
“In my view, the State of California needs to conduct a comprehensive siting survey to identify the best locations for future desal facilities around the state, identifying the sites that are safe from sea-level rise, flooding, seismic hazards and are designed to minimize impacts on ocean and coastal resources, and that are sized appropriately for the locations. And, these sites should be prioritized based on the critical need of the new water supplies for a particular area. In addition, all other less environmentally damaging and less expensive water supply alternatives should be explored first, or at least concurrently with desal alternatives.”
Ainsworth’s plan is a start, but it needs more details to protect against the kind of blatant misinterpretations of State environmental rules and regulations that allowed Poseidon to push the project for twenty years while gaming the system and blaming its self-inflicted delays on environmentalists.
Here’s my 11-point proposal: an upfront checklist that would be completed before any ocean desalination project would come before the state for permits. It would require, unlike Poseidon’s Huntington Beach project proposal, a completely transparent process from start to finish:
1) NEED: Is the project really needed based on water demand and an exhaustive study of all other more immediate, cost-effective, and environmentally beneficially alternatives?
2) ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: Have environmental justice considerations, including cost and job potential with the alternatives been addressed directly with disadvantaged communities? Have full tribal consultations been done?
3) COST: Is the full cost of this project justified and what are the impacts on environmental justice communities? Does it involve a long-term contract that could preclude investment in other choices, like full levels of water efficiency, dealing with system leaks, capturing and reusing storm and rainwater, and greywater, all within a systems watershed approach? How will the plant deal with increased costs of energy and membranes? What is the true cost for ratepayers and taxpayers in general, including subsidies and government-backed tax-free bonds, and low-interest loans?
4) GHG-Green House Gas and climate change: Does the project create more greenhouse gases, thus exacerbating climate-change-enhanced droughts in the ongoing state of water emergency that is part of California’s ancient history? Does any proposed mitigation honestly account for the full operational energy impacts of the plant and does any proposed renewable energy provide for that?
5) IMPORTED WATER OFFSETS: Does the proposed plant actually offset imported water by returning flows and retaining water in the Bay Delta or other areas of origin including groundwater? Can local level river flows and wetlands retain water to be produced by the plant?
6) NEW DEVELOPMENT: Does the project allow for new coastal or inland development without reducing actual water demand? Or does the project allow demand to remain high with the promise of a new supply?
7) FISHERIES AND MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS: Does the project deal with both the intake and discharge impacts and is there adequate mitigation that can be done before the project is run?
8) THE FUTURE: Does the plant allow for changes in technology and even scenarios with climate change where there will be more floods with climate change? If demand continues to drop more than the plant produces, can it be shut down?
9)PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE: does the plant have a private owner or operator? Is there really a difference with public water agencies often part of the cabal of the hydrological water brotherhood of engineering consultants and construction firms, banks, financing and insurance companies?
10) SCALE: Is this small scale plant less impactful than are large one? What are the cumulative impacts of small plants? What are the specific marine habitat and fisheries impacts of this plant?
11) DOES OCEAN DESAL WORK: How will the plant and region deal with the plant going down with inevitable red tides, oil and sewage spills? Have we created a dependency on an industrial plant that will have operational problems and even mechanical shutdowns, and where will the water come from then?
Conner Everts has fought against Poseidon Water’s proposed and now denied $1.4 billion ocean desalination project for 20 years. He is is Facilitator for the Environmental Water Caucus, Executive Director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance and co-chair of the Desal Response Group. He is chair of Public Officials for Water and Environmental Reform (POWER) as well as on the board of other organizations, including Amigos de Los Rios. He co-chairs and moderates the Southern California Water Dialogue and the Green LA Water Committee Coalition.
Thank you John