Commentary: Desalination project is least environmentally harmful option, and it is necessary

I was recently appointed to the Orange County Water District’s volunteer, 18-member Ocean Desalination Citizens Advisory Committee.

The first of three meetings to be convened over a month was held March 26.

We’re providing feedback regarding the proposed Poseidon Water desalination plant, which would be located next to the AES power plant on Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach, and evaluating a draft term sheet to analyze the complicated contractual nuances of the district’s purchase agreement for water from the facility.

The Poseidon plant would be capable of producing approximately 50 million gallons per day. OCWD is considering buying all of it, and when the facility is completed, having it available for drinking water as is. Outright brokerage or trades and credits could free up some for other Orange County providers.

We’re talking readily accessible, locally produced water that could alleviate regional distribution needs. Reliance on potable supply imported from Northern California and the Colorado River leaves inventory vulnerable to shortages and, as we’re facing now, reduced allocations.

All of the recovery, reuse, reclamation, efficiency and conservation strategies combined don’t meet present, let alone projected future, needs.

We import a lot of our water from sources that are subject to increasing regulatory restrictions, environmental constraints and natural disasters of indeterminate length, disruptive emergencies that could cut us off completely tomorrow. Our groundwater basins throughout the county, while lifesavers today, are insufficient in size and dangerously overdrafted.

The quandary is that the amount of water we obtain simultaneously increases the cost of the water. With climate change and more upstream recycling, future drafting from our poorly recharged basins is suspect at best.

The Poseidon project is being handed to us, and it can provide the only real, locally controlled, drought-proof, immune-from-climate-change new water supply.

Poseidon is taking all the financial risk to build and operate the plant, and ratepayers only have to pay for potable water that is delivered and meets contractual specifications for quantity, quality, reliability and price.

What’s the cost? An average of 10% more than Orange County is paying for the less reliable, lower quality and at-great-risk water being pumped here.

Opposition has held this facility hostage for a decade at almost every juncture in the regulatory approval process. Adversaries have challenged everything from costs to surf-zone access to exaggerated “red herring” allegations regarding impacts on the minuscule marine plankton.

Regardless of the distractions, this is about costs and needs.

Huntington Beach, biologically, has very-low-value marine habitat, nary a threatened or endangered species in permanent residence.

Intake galleries pose no threat to recreational users, and there are zillions of plankton out there. Population numbers, therefore, aren’t jeopardized by the project.

Clean Water Now, a south Orange County-based, non-governmental organization, is firmly committed to safe, sustainable and reliable water supply objectives with responsible ecological oversight being paramount, and it supports this project.

South O.C. water districts have expressed great interest in purchasing nearly one-third of the production, whether through the direct or indirect means I mentioned. Because of subterranean geological disparities, the groundwater capacities amenable to potable extraction and our wells are pitifully insufficient in south O.C., where about 1 million people live.

Meanwhile, the hundreds of millions of dollars we would need to expand and upgrade to advanced waste treatment satellite systems, to secure any semblance of autonomy, just aren’t available. Everyone has to compete for outside funds.

The Poseidon project is proposed for an already impacted location. It poses the least ecological threat of any other O.C. candidates. The Pacific Ocean is O.C.’s resource and, let’s face facts, we should have pursued multiple ocean desalination plants long ago.

ROGER E. BUTOW is the founder and executive director of Clean Water Now, established in 1998. He has been a resident of Laguna Beach and a builder in south Orange County since 1972, and for the past 17 years has been a professional land-use and regulatory compliance advisor.