[Revisited] Post-Poseidon: to desalinate or not to desalinate, that is NOT the main question

The future of good water management depends on understanding the complexities of climate change, not simplistic 'solutions'

This guest commentary was posted last year on SoCal Water Wars, but I am reposting it now because of the recent passage of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s infrastructure streamlining package.

By Joe Geever

The California Coastal Commission sunk Poseidon Water’s proposed Huntington Beach ocean desalination project on May 12 by an 11-0 vote.

Then, what role should ocean desalination play in California’s future?

Executive Director Jack Ainsworth told commissioners that the staff’s recommended project denial didn’t preclude building other coastal desalination plants.

“First of all,” he said, alluding to climate change, “I think we all agree and recognize that the ongoing historical drought is a crisis in California and that desalinization facilities will be part of California’s future water portfolio.”

Boy standing between two large tunas caught off Santa Catalina Island C. 1910. Photo by Brickey Wiki

Some of my environmentalist friends say that ocean desalination should never be part of California’s water portfolio.

Others support the proposed Doheny ocean desalination plant and the existing plant serving the City of Santa Barbara, both small projects, as alternatives to Poseidon’s proposal, a would-be $1.4 billion boondoggle and environmental catastrophe.

But Poseidon VP Scott Maloni calls the Pacific Ocean the “largest reservoir in the world” and sees ocean desalination as an important future water source for adapting to climate change—along with dams, canals, tunnels, and other “tools in the toolbox.”

“We have to keep providing the quality of life that we’ve all come to enjoy here. And we need to build [to do that],” Maloni told the EPOC Times last September.

The 20th Century, and the growth of the Industrial Age, is an amazing feat of human creativity. We’ve developed a world of safety and comfort that would have been unimaginable prior to the technological wizardry. But it’s clearly not that simple. Climate change forces us to re-think the costs and benefits of the technological age.

The Poseidon proposal and its rejection by the Coastal Commission showed that for every complex problem there’s always a simplistic solution that is wrong.

But both proponents and opponents of ocean desalination tend to offer overly-simplistic solutions for adapting to climate change.  

The problems of providing water and energy in the future are complex. We need to define those problems accurately in order to find the right solutions.