Poseidon Town: The Beginning.

Cross-posted from John Earl’s Surf City Voice.

Warburg-Pincus is a multinational corporation that in 2005 had investment holdings in 120 companies in North and South America, Asia, and Europe in 2005, according to Hoover’s online.

Poseidon’s subsidiary role then as now was to financialize a portion of publicly owned water infrastructure in Orange County for the benefit of Poseidon and the project’s investors through “public-private partnerships” (PPPs).

At the same time, Poseidon was on a similar track in Carlsbad in San Diego County, a story that I will tell more about as Poseidon Town Through the Wormhole unravels.

Poseidon’s Orange County mission was to build a $1.4 billion (in today’s dollars) ocean desalination plant on top of an earthquake fault, co-located with a power plant that sits next to the Ascon Landfill, a toxic waste dump in an upper middle-class neighborhood in Huntington Beach, in the middle of a predicted climate-change induced flood zone.

The red circle marks the approximate site for Poseidon’s desalination plant and the existing AES power plant: California Department of Conservation fault map.

To maximize efficiency and profits, Poseidon chose to co-locate with the AES power plant located on Newland Ave. and Beach Blvd. in order to use its seawater-intake cooling system to suck up about 100 million gallons of seawater for conversion to 50 million gallons of drinking water per day.

That mission remains unfulfilled but ongoing today, nearly 20 years later.

Poseidon Resources probably began taking its project proposal to officials of the City of Huntington Beach, the Orange County Water District (OCWD), and the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) sometime in 2001 or earlier, about when Poseidon began preliminary studies of the project site…

Read the rest on Surf City Voice – it’ll blow your hair back!

Just SOME of our Previous Coverage of Poseidon:

• HB Council Respectfully Asks Coastal Commission to Shitcan Poseidon.  (July 2013)
• Poseidon Runs Headlong into Infiltration Gallery (report on Nov 2013 Coastal Commission hearing)
• Poseidon’s Water Boy: Matt Harper Quietly Pushes Desal Scam Past Ratepayers.  (May 2014)
• OCWD’s Sheldon Clams Up on Poseidon Vote, Flory Shakes Things Up!  (June 2014)
• Who owns the OCWD, you or Poseidon? YOU DO! Remind them, tonight!  (June 2014)
• Unpacking Poseidon’s Latest Propaganda Blitz with Debbie Cook. Pt 1: The CNN Puff Piece.  (June 2014)
• Recent Poseidon-Probolsky Push-Poll Threatens Candidates and Misleads Voters.  (Nov. 2014)
• Sheldon’s Unethical Culture Challenged by Legal Complaint (Dec. 2014)
• Poseidon & OCWD Bring their Snake-Oil Show to the Pumpers Tomorrow (Dec. 2014)
• Surfin’ Sheldon, Little Lost Dina, Righteous Flory – What You’ve Been Missing at OCWD!  (Jan. 2015)
• Poseidon Update: OCWD “just sticks the tip in…” (Jan. 2015)
• Sheldon Says “Suck it Surf City!” The Poseidon Shill is also Behind our High Density Development.  (Feb. 2015)
• OCWD’s Forecast for the Future: Cloudy with a Huge Chance of Error.  (March 2015)
• Pat Bates Baits Us with Bogus Doomsday Drought Scenario.  (March 2015)
• Swan Song for Poseidon? A Blast of Truth from Irvine’s Peer Swan.  (March 2015)
• Cage Rattled Hard, OCWD Dons Fig Leaf Before Marrying Poseidon.  (April 2015)
• Our Celebrated Groundwater Replenishment System Steals Poseidon’s Lunch Money.  (April 2015)
• OCWD profile #1: Phil Anthony, the Quiet Skeptic.  (April 2015)
• Showdown at the OCWD Corral Nears, R4RD launches Volley.  (May 2015)
• The Poseidon Adventure Sails On!  (May 2015)
• Dina Nguyen Stands Up Garden Grove, Skips Fascinating Poseidon Forum.  (May 2015)
• Will OCWD be Shipwrecked by Mermaids? (June 2015)
• Cathy Green Falsely Carries Poseidon Water to Coastal Commission  (June 2015)
• Watch Poseidon Joke over Proposed Property Tax Increase to fund their “Privately Funded” Desal Project.  (July 2015)
• Bao Stands for Garden Grove Against Poseidon, the rest of Council Waffles.  (July 2015)
• Phan is the Man – who Stopped this and Needs to Start it Again!  (July 2015)
• OC Can Do Desal Better – Use Salt to Lock Up CO2 Emissions.  (August 2015)
• San Diego Has Too Much Water – but is Paying $1 Billion for Their Poseidon Plant.  (Dec. 2015)
• Poseidon Progress Report: Eight Ways to Screw the Public.  (Feb. 2016)
• Why the Coastal Commission Will Approve Poseidon.  (April 2016)
• Poseidon in denial over the obstacles ahead, and more… (May 2016)
• Dispatches from the Battle Against Poseidon, Summer 2016 (July 2016)
• Poseidon Plays the Race Card, LULAC Dances to their Tune.  (July 2016)
• Fullerton Reaches its Day of Decision on Poseidon (Jan. 2017)
• OCWD Tonight:  Replenish the Aquifer with the Winter’s Fabulous Snows!  (April 2017)
• John Earl:  The Ideological War Behind Poseidon.  (August 2017)
• How Stoopid Does Poseidon Think This County is Anyway?  (Jan. 2018)
• OCWD Blocks Study of Alternatives to Poseidon, Misleading Coastal Commission.  (Feb. 2018)
• Poseidon-Obsessed OCWD will Try to Ram Billion-Dollar Desal Project Down Our Throats.  (June 2018)
• Excellent Comments for Poseidon Term-Sheet Meeting:  Hamilton, Everts, Moshiri, Hiemstra (June 2018)
• Climate Change could Swamp Billion-Dollar Desal Deal (June 2018)
• Top Three Reasons Poseidon’s New Term Sheet SHOULD Have Been Rejected July 18 (July 2018)
• Important Poseidon Updates – Video of Wednesday’s meeting, and who’s running for OCWD?  (July 2018)
• Poseidon’s Voodoo Math;  and Klepto Kris Murray named to powerful Water Board (December 2018)
• Let’s put Poseidon out of its misery this year:  Latest reports from the Front Line.  (February 2019)
• New OCWD Director Kelly Rowe’s ALTERNATIVE to Poseidon.  (August 2019)
• Poseidon’s Failing Report Card in Carlsbad (October 2019)
• Indigenous People’s Day and Tuesday’s Desal Townhall:  Poseidon as Columbus.  (October 2019)
• Transformation Complete: OC Water District now “Poseidon Water District of OC.”  (Dec. 2019)
• Poseidon’s “Reliability” Promise: Pay More, Get the Same!  (July 2020)
• Karl Seckel for MWDOC!  (Nov. 2020)
• Elect 2020’s Water Patriots: Elliot, Moulton-Patterson, Seckel, Yoo Schneider, Beard & Ereth! (Nov. 2020)
• Poseidon’s Latest Corporate Welfare Demand (Jan. 2021)
• Why OCWD pays CalDesal $5000 a Year, and a Very Good Brown Act Question.  (Jan. 2021)
• Gov. Newsom: Stop Shoving Poseidon Down OC’s Throat!  (April 2021)
• THE POSEIDON WHORES. (April 2021)
• Surf City Voice: Poseidon Town Through the Wormhole.  (May 2021)