DoHo Desalination: Did South Coast Water District Bury The Bad News?

Doheny Ocean Desalination Project: Did South Coast Water District Intentionally Bury The Bad News?

Humiliated by foreknowledge of the California Coastal Commission’s (CCC) staff report and their recommended conditions for approval to their agency Board, just made publicly available, released on Friday, September 30th (yesterday), SCWD decided to “Hide The Project Ball.”

How else to interpret the media silence?

It’s not a stretch, that there’s a case to made that like the sub-surface, slant well intakes themselves, SCWD deceitfully buried the breaking story. So the general public stakeholders weren’t even aware of the hearing’s Thursday, October 13th date on the CCC agenda, to be held in San Diego.

That’s because as of today, October 1st, there have been no media announcements regarding this final hurdle for the DODP: No Public Service Announcements, no Press Releases. Nada Zilch. Bupkis. Nary a peep.

I took it upon myself, under the banner of my NGO, as Executive Director of CLEAN WATER NOW (established in 1998), to do so myself yesterday in a mass broadcast email to the OC media world, right after I opened and read the agenda packet (excerpt of my email below).

CCC approval is one of the last, and has the seriously grave potential to reflect the highest, strictest standards and metrics final hurdle. Those who trailed The Poseidon Adventure disaster movie upcoast in Huntington Beach know that.

It is mildly disconcerting that the filing date on the CCC staff report is 9/22, yet notifications didn’t go out nor were posted at their website until 9/30? Hmmmmm.

https://documents.coastal.ca.g...

Meanwhile, yesterday, I mass broadcast to the media world what I believe SCWD had shirked and intentionally avoided: Circulating the traumatic CCC terms, the significant downsizing/scaling back, plus the other specific exactions and concessions which reflected good news: This permitting body listened and sustained objections and CWN concerns; ones that we had frustratingly and redundantly raised previously, since SCWD took over sole Project control as lead agency 8+ years ago back in 2014.

If agreed to by SCWD, then ratified without objections in toto by the CCC, it will be about 1/3 of its originally proposed size (compare fotos in this column’s introduction).

4 wells total, in 2 pod arrays downcoast, not 12 wells spread out in 5 arrays.

Look for SCWD and their PR flacks (if they capitulate, accept the staff recommendations) to pull a CYA, spin what is truly getting their asses handed to them as one of their affably predicted and acceptable scenarios. It’s not, that would be a gross misrepresentation, aka a fabrication.

Back on March 9th of this year, at a San Diego Regional Water Board hearing held in Mission Viejo, SCWD primped and preened, thought they had a done deal, took a victory lap in MV City Council Chambers. They made sure that media heavily publicized that body’s necessary certification of their amended San Juan Creek Ocean Outfall (SJCOO) NPDES discharge permit.

It felt pre-determined in the room that day, and though this Board usually focuses dutifully and diligently, not to mention gave a lot of scrutiny to the Poseidon Carlsbad facility, IMO it fell far short of its industry-wide, respected stellar reputation.

The SDRWQCB granted them the right to barf the proposed desalination treatment facility’s highly concentrated briney waste (for every 2 gallons of ocean water drafted, only 1 becomes drinkable product). Briny waste from desalination is recognized as about twice the chloride concentration levels as open ocean.

The SJCOO is out near the end of the jetty parallel to the Dana Point Harbor entrance, the waste would commingle (nearly 50/50 ratio) with SCWD’s average 3 million gallons per day (mgd) of secondary affluent contribution to that pipe.

A total of ≈9-10 mgd is presently puked out via the SJCOO by other SOC Wastewater Authority members that hold JPA utility capacity rights. Much is secondary level affluent waste, commingled with other inland treatment plant briny waste depositions from member utilities.

The affluent secondary amounts, mind you, haven’t gone through any advanced pollutant removal or reduction process. Imagine how those ocean bottom inhabitants or migrant species, without a vote or voice feel about that daily dose, hmmmmm?

CWN is South OC’s premier watershed watchdog NGO, I am a professional land use and regulatory compliance advisor myself, yet SCWD decided to ignore our body of input since 2014. We warned them, but their arrogance blinded them to potential State oversight guideline intervention.

State plus federal agencies are developing increasingly prescriptive guardrails/regs, that we repeatedly brought up, and the historical oral and written testimony record input confirms our explicit, long term criticism laundry list.

ASAP, post 3/09, CWN began contacting every agency that might comprehend our ongoing reservations, networked them with alarming red flags, connected the negative, dark downside dots for them so to speak.

We made sure, confirmed that they communicated with each other, and FYI to rookies, these bureaucracies don’t always do so in a coordinated, conjunctive manner because their physical and virtual desks are already piled high.

I’ve been writing prolifically myself, both online and in hard copy (links at the end of this column). I’ve been tracking the DODP since its launch by MWDOC 20 years ago.

Contained in our mass broadcast, our socializing yesterday, is a list of what we felt were burning priorities. We, unlike SCWD, have nothing to hide, and are definitely NOT duplicitous.

Though the SDRWQCB didn’t listen to us, other State regulatory oversight/jurisdictional/public resource trust agencies must have. The fatal flaws, the faults and deficiencies apparent to us since 2014 began to resonate, to cascade throughout the regulatory digestive system.

Here’s a cut & paste from that announcement to give you, the reader our take on the CCC staff report, why we think it’s of great importance, why we wanted media engaged and widely revealing what’s going on:

“4 of our top priorities, our 4 main objections that we included in repeated petitions to public agencies will have been addressed and altered if the CCC packet is certified:

(1) Zero recreational displacement/dislocation on the western, upcoast (Day Use) side of DoHo, an area that should be kept inviolate, undisturbed, no construction staging, no installations, no maintenance or operational activities.

(2) No above/below surface seawater transmission main crossing the estuary/lagoon, hence that high value habitat also kept protected, inviolate and undisturbed

(3) Discourage the previously offered, extremely remote mitigation 30 miles away at the LA and OC county line, CCC wants a more local/proximate preferred impact mitigation (Aliso Creek and San Juan Creek Estuaries?). Coastal wetlands nearer the Project, and not 3 miles inland either.

Then too, someone “discovered” that the Coastal Conservancy had already pledged full $$$ underwriting of the Los Cerritos inland wetlands rehab which SCWD submitted to the SD Board as mitigation in March, as the mitigation part of their approval packet. Due diligence is critical, so why didn’t SCWD know that and when didn’t they know it?

(4) Estuary Water Level Drawdown/Seawater Intrusion Upstream Likelihood Attenuated. CWN is going to ask that SCWD pivot the well arrays/pods another 15° in a more easterly/landward, downcoast direction (drafting further away from the estuarine) to increase certainty % that neither potential sea water intrusion or drawdown, dewatering of the fragile lagoon ever takes place.”

There you have our perspective, what we hope happens at the 10/13 CCC hearing. The curtain has been drawn back by their staff, revealing SCWD’s mistakes, over-reach and over-confidence, their lack of homework and lapsed enviro-sensitivity.

If approved, SCWD should give serious thought to supporting Santa Margarita Water District’s offer, its legitimate proposal made this year to SOCWA’s membership agencies: Let SMWD take over the ownership, the operation and maintenance of the JB Latham secondary treatment plant on Del Obispo in Dana Point near PCH, just across San Juan Creek from the proposed desalination facility site.

SMWD has a plan, is willing to self-fund, avail itself of the JBL’s remaining physical space currently not being used. They’ve offered to build an Advanced Waste Treatment Plant (AWTP) annex which could produce ≈6 mgd of Title 22 irrigation level supplies.

Some if not all could in turn could be wheeled (transported) easily over to the DODP facility, comingled with the seawater potable production, thus creating a true regional utility supply in the neighborhood of 10+ mgd. It’s about time that SCWD acted in a responsible, fiduciary manner, stops writing blank checks burning up and depleting its ratepayer’s and grant fund coffers.

It needs to wake up and smell the reliable, sustainable regional collaboration coffee, not keep believing its own generated propaganda, i.e., grow up and stop drinking its own Kool-Aid.

https://www.lagunabeachindy.co...

https://patch.com/california/l...

https://voiceofoc.org/2021/07/...