MAILBAG:

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following are in response to the Jan. 29 letter, “Construction of pipeline will be a dream realized.”

As a member of Residents for Responsible Desalination, I got a good laugh at the rosy picture Rich Kolander painted of how wonderful it will be to have the pipeline bringing all this drinkable ocean water into Huntington Beach.

Does he know that the desalination plant proposed for Huntington Beach isn’t providing any water for Huntington Beach? We don’t need it and can’t afford it anyway. They are polluting our ocean to get potable (drinkable) water.

Poseidon is a private for-profit company, and water is a necessity for life. Water should not be privately owned. Whoever gave him his information, I wish he’d do one thing: see if he can find out from the company how much a square acre-foot of desalinated water will cost. Our groundwater now costs Huntington Beach $490 a square acre-foot. Poseidon will not tell how much the cost will be for their water, but rumor has it costing between $1,000 and $3,000 a square acre-foot. Think twice before we get any more dealing with Poseidon Huntington Beach.

Eileen Murphy

Huntington Beach

Desalination letter full of inaccuracies

I would like to “factually” clarify some comments made by Rich Kolander.

Comment: “I understand that the Sanitation District’s construction of the huge, gravity-feed trunk line along Bushard Street was an inconvenience.”

Fact: It took three years to run the sanitation pipeline from Brookhurst to Bushard streets along Banning Avenue and north on Bushard to Hamilton Avenue. This is one mile. In the process there were 64 lawsuits filed for damage to homes, and access to housing tracts was limited.

Kolander states, “the desalination water pipeline reaches about knee height to the average man.”

Fact: The pipeline is 42 to 48 inches, as stated in the Coastal Development Permit. If this pipeline is knee-high and I am 6 feet tall, a 48-inch pipe would be up to my diaphragm. If the pipe comes up to Kolander’s knee, as he stated, this would mean he is about 13 feet, 8 inches tall.

Comment: “The construction along Hamilton will last only two weeks.”

Fact: From page 8 of the Coastal Permit, “Construction within city limits, Newland along Hamilton to Brookhurst, north along Brookhurst to Adams, east to the Santa Ana River, 8 months.” Same document, page 11, Bushard-Hamilton intersection, “Short-term disruption of traffic as a result is expected to be 1-2 weeks.” That is one to two weeks to go across an intersection, not 1 1/2 miles. This is also assuming there are no problems. Maybe before Kolander starts throwing out fantasy facts he ought to check the documents that have the actual facts.

Another “fact” is this water from the desalination plant will go to South County and will allow Huntington Beach to buy water in an emergency, and who knows at what cost?

Kolander, retired from Boeing, might stick to building airplanes instead of writing editorials with “fictional facts” regarding the desal plant.

Note: I am still looking for a 13-foot-8 guy walking around southeast Huntington Beach!

Topper Horack

Huntington Beach

Comments show a lack of understanding

For a retired engineer, Rich Kolander was remarkably imprecise with his facts and figures in his recent letter about the proposed Poseidon pipeline. So were his conclusions.

The Sanitation District trunk line was large (108-inch diameter) but not quite as big as Kolander envisioned. The proposed desal water pipeline (at 48 inches diameter plus casing) is well above “knee height to an average man.”

Negative impacts from the desal plant’s pipeline were largely ignored by a City Council majority that had already made up its mind to approve the project. The EIR and R-EIR impacts were not “fully studied” and were picked apart and discredited thoroughly by Councilwomen Debbie Cook and Jill Hardy (I was at every meeting).

Kolander is dreaming if he thinks it will take only two weeks to put in a 48-inch-diameter pipeline that has to go under and around many obstacles. And he is doing worse than dreaming if he thinks anything was “settled by sound science and responsible public policy makers.” Quite the opposite was true.

The Poseidon desal plant project was a political giveaway that had little to do with water and with serving community needs and everything to do with toadying up to partisan players and development special interests.

The only silver lining is that the project will probably never be built. High energy costs would push Poseidon’s desal water to, some would say, a charitable $1,200 per acre-foot. Conservation and an expanded Groundwater Replenishment Water System (GWRS) are much cheaper and surer bets to serve our water needs over the next decade.

Current estimates peg GWRS water costs at about $877 per acre-foot. Other sources of water (both local and imported) are well below that and are available and locked in for years.

Kolander is again misinformed in claiming that Poseidon “will use the most advanced, state-of-the-art technology available today.” They couldn’t even get it right with their initial desal plant in Tampa, Fla.

And Poseidon’s proposed use of the AES intake system for “once-through-cooling” (OTC) is dated technology that may soon be banned because of the environmental damage it causes.

Poseidon has no demonstrated success in this field. Merle Moshiri’s concerns, expressed in her Sounding Off (“Actions aren’t matching words,” Jan. 15), are entirely legitimate and appropriate. Seemingly, most residents of southeast Huntington Beach would agree with her positions.

As for being victimized, it is clear that southeast HB residents have been by the City Council majority regarding this project. On the other hand, Kolander’s comments and criticisms are ignorant and show a complete lack of understanding of the issues and realities of the problem we are facing from Poseidon.

Tim Geddes