Huntington Beach Desalination Project Touted By Boxer, Still Opposed By Many

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — Poseidon Water's plan to provide Orange County with 50 million gallons of fresh drinking water was touted by former Sen. Barbara Boxer and former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez on Wednesday. Both called upon state regulators Wednesday to approve the proposed Huntington Beach desalination project, where those many gallons would be extracted daily from the Pacific ocean.

Boxer, a democrat with a reputation as a dedicated environmentalist, and Nunez, who authored the state's legislation to curb climate change, are asking state leaders to finally approve the Huntington Beach project, which began the state's permitting process in 2002, a statement said.

It said Boxer and Nunez both serve as consultants on the Poseidon Water project.

"The Huntington Beach desalination project is a positive and critical response to the severe impacts of climate change in California," said Boxer. "The five-year drought that we experienced between 2012 and 2016 caused great suffering and I saw it first hand; it turned our farmers against our fishermen and caused anxiety for all our families. We should and must respond in an environmentally sound way, not with damaging large dams or importing more water.'

As a long time proponent of desalination, who wrote the desalination provisions in the last federal water bill in 2016, I urge all the state administrative agencies to move forward on the Huntington Beach proposal that has been languishing for over a decade, resulting in nearly 220 billion gallons of lost water," she said.
Nunez added: "One year of good rainfall doesn't mean we can sit back and not prepare for our future, climate change, and the next drought.

Opposition to the billion dollar private, for-profit project venture claimed that the facility is widely opposed and is not necessary to meet Orange County’s water needs. Furthermore, it would impose sky high economic and energy costs on area ratepayers, they claim. They also criticized the tactics proponents are using to get the project through to fruition, including hiring Boxer and Nunez as paid lobbiests.

“Poseidon really wants to profit off California’s drought fears, and they are pulling out all the stops to try to get the Huntington Beach desal plant approved” said Ray Hiemstra of Orange County Coastkeeper. “But no amount of lobbying can change the facts: this is expensive water we don’t need. Orange County can meet our water needs through smarter options like efficiency and recycling, and we have scarcely begun to tap the potential of stormwater that is currently falling all around us.”

Orange County’s April 2016 water plan shows that the county can meet all of its water needs through 2040 without the Poseidon plant. The plan also shows a healthy surplus through 2040 for Metropolitan, the agency that supplies imported water for Southern California communities.

“Poseidon was acquired last year by Brookfield Infrastructure, a foreign-owned firm that has a reputation for being ruthless in its pursuit of profits,” said Susan Jordan of California Coastal Protection Network. “Just like Big Oil lobbies to push through their projects, we are now seeing Big Water trying to score sweetheart deals on the backs of California’s communities.”

A recent study by the nonpartisan Pacific Institute found that communities could save a fortune by focusing their water investments on conservation, efficiency, and recycled water instead. Orange County already has a recycled water facility that produces far more water than the proposed desalination plant for a fraction of the cost, allege the desalination opponents.

In addition to its high cost, one of the main problems with desalination is its outsized energy use. Desalination is the most energy intensive way to produce fresh water. It takes about three times as much energy as recycling, and, in Orange County, will use enough electricity to power 30,000 homes. Poseidon’s proposal is fundamentally opposed to the state’s leadership on energy efficiency and climate action.

“This is a Wall Street water plan—conceived and supported by the wealthy with little regard for ordinary people,” said Marce Gutierrez-Graudins of Azul. “No matter what high profile lobbyists they hire, it’s still a bad deal for consumers, and we don’t need the water.”

Poseidon Water, the plant's developer, has also proposed a plan to offer funding to restore and maintain the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, providing much needed funding for the restoration and maintenance of one of California's last remaining large-scale wetlands.

The desalination project is designed to produce 56,000 acre feet per year, or 50 million gallons per day of locally controlled, drought-proof drinking water that will reduce Orange County's need to import water from Northern California and the Colorado River, according to a statement from Poseidon Water.

City News Service contributed to this report.

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