Desalination plant plan may sink

State and federal environmental organizations have recently adopted resolutions that may force Poseidon Resources Corp. to rethink its plans to build a desalination plant in Huntington Beach.

State agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are moving away from environmentally-harmful cooling processes used by coastal power plants, including the aging AES plant where Connecticut-based Poseidon wants to build its facility.

The California State Lands Commission and the California Ocean Protection Council said they recognized the multiple negative effects of cooling processes employed by power stations. They are working to prohibit new power plants from using the systems as well as requiring older facilities to upgrade.

Coastal power plants have intake pipes that suck water out of the ocean, trapping and killing marine life in order to cool equipment.

The heat kills fish, larvae and any other plant or animal life before the water is returned to the ocean through an outfall pipe that extends about 1,500 feet off shore.

Poseidon’s plans are based on using the power plant’s piping systems to desalinate the water that the plant has already drawn from the ocean.

But if the once-through cooling processes are to be phased out, the cost for Poseidon to install a desalination plant might be much higher.

“We need to look at the future ? we don’t need water for the next 20 years, but what happens after that?” said Councilman Gil Coerper, who supported the desalination project in Huntington Beach.

The $250-million Poseidon project was approved by the City Council in March by a vote of 4-3. Council members Don Hansen, Keith Bohr, Cathy Green and Coerper supported the project. Mayor Dave Sullivan, along with Councilwomen Debbie Cook and Jill Hardy, voted against the desalination facility.

The Huntington Beach desalination plant would produce about 50 million gallons of water daily.

If the AES power plant goes away, which is already 50 years old, Coerper said the desalination plant wouldn’t be impacted, as they would still have to pull in water from the ocean. He said he didn’t have all the information and would rather not guess.

The once-through cooling process concentrates bacteria in the outfall pipe, according to Jan Vandersloot, founder member of the Ocean Outfall Group.

The group, which started a grass-roots campaign for secondary treatment of waste, contends that the once-through process is being eliminated at the federal and state levels, but the Huntington Beach power plant still depends on it.

And that’s a wonderful opportunity for Poseidon, “so they don’t have to build new pipes and can use the pipes already in place,” Vandersloot said.

He uses the example of Dana Point, which is building a desalination plant using intake pipes embedded under the sand that would not entrap and destroy marine life.

Various studies on the cooling process estimate that 2.2 million fish were killed in eight Southern California power plants during the late 1970s, according to the State Lands Commission resolution.

The Ocean Outfall Group and Residents for Responsible Desalination are afraid if the California Coastal Commission approves the Poseidon proposal at the AES facility in Huntington Beach, it would “enshrine those pipes there permanently.”

The desalination company recently received a minor setback when the Coastal Commission found substantial reason to consider appeals against the proposed plant in Huntington Beach.

The Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction over ocean waters, heard appeals April 12 filed by anti-Poseidon group Residents for Responsible Desalination, the Surfrider Foundation and planning commissioners Mike Reilly and Mary Shallenberger in Santa Barbara.

In response to the resolutions, the Coastal Commission staff is reviewing the proposed desalination plant operations both with and without the power plant.

“Assuming at some point in future the AES power plant will shut down completely, or if they retool the facility, which will shut down the facility from a few weeks to a few months, we have asked Poseidon to look at what would be the effects of running a desal plant just on its own,” said Tom Luster, the commission desalination expert.

The Coastal Commission staff will be holding a formal hearing for the project between June and the end of summer, as its staff recommended “substantial issue” was raised by appellants. No commissioners objected to the appeals.

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