Decidedly against desalination plant A salesman has...

Decidedly against desalination plant

A salesman has once again hit up City Hall with a spotty track

record and lukewarm references. This salesman, Poseidon Resources

Corp., with its desalination plant, should be escorted to the door by

the City Council and asked not to return to the city of Huntington

Beach.

Poseidon is offering a technology that is unproven and not

urgently needed. Sure there will be a need for additional water

sources in the future, but why should Huntington Beach be the guinea

pig when water still flows freely at a reasonable price? This is

especially true since the proposal site at Newland and Pacific Coast

Highway is quickly becoming incompatible with its residential- and

tourism-based neighbors. And we must ask ourselves: What would happen

to the tax dollars generated from tourists if our beaches become

fouled as a result?

Furthermore, Poseidon is a private entity that will not answer to

the city but to its investors. We might as well have the Arrowhead or

Sparkletts truck drop off extra bottles for our sprinklers, showers

and laundry. When a profit motive gets mixed up with public

utilities, the result is often a higher price. At an estimated $850

per acre-foot of desalinated water (2 to 3 times the current price),

the writing is on the wall.

If desalination becomes a proven technology in other nearby

communities, then perhaps we should consider it. But as most smart

businesses, organizations and municipalities do, Huntington Beach

should avoid excessive risk and reject Poseidon’s bid to build a

desalination plant on the AES property. The promise of any real

return for the city in this case is highly questionable.

DAVID MARICICH

Huntington Beach

Southeast gets short end of pipeline

The Poseidon environmental report has two rejected alternative

routing proposals for the pipeline that would carry the produced

water to its potential point of usage somewhere in South County.

Under the Alternate 2 scenario, the 42- to 48-inch pipeline carrying

the water to its users in South County would have used the Edison

right-of-way north of Hamilton Avenue to carry their water to the

Santa Ana River. Their pipeline then would have proceeded in the

Edison right-of-way in a northeasterly direction adjacent to the

river and cross the river at a point coinciding with the northern

border of the Fairview Park and the Costa Mesa golf course. Edison

rejected this alternative.

Costa Mesa rejected Alternative 1. That alternative would have had

the pipeline constructed under Hamilton Avenue and then continue east

across the river and down Victoria Avenue.

What remains is a scenario that leaves Huntington Beach bearing

the brunt of getting water to South County. The remaining route is

down Hamilton to Brookhurst and up Brookhurst to Adams and across the

river. The planned route will close two lanes on Hamilton and

Brookhurst during construction. Again residents of southeast

Huntington Beach will be subjected to the perils incumbent upon:

dewatering, deep trenches, the pounding of heavy equipment and the

traffic problems that months of torn up streets will bring.

More than 60 families have joined a lawsuit seeking to recover

damages to their homes from the city, the construction company and

the sanitation district resulting from sewer construction on

Brookhurst, Banning and Bushard streets. Trenching, dewatering and

heavy equipment have left homes with cracked, empty pools, doors that

will not close, slabs that are cracked, room additions that are

moving away from the house and many people heartsick as they witness

the destruction of the home in which they have spent a lifetime.

Again the people of southeast Huntington Beach find themselves

strangers in their own city as some city officials, some city

employees, and some city council persons align themselves with

Poseidon, a company from Connecticut, to bring more industry and more

damaged homes to us

JOHN SCOTT

Huntington Beach