[Greg: John Earl of SoCal Water Wars, from which this is a teaser cross-post, makes an interesting observation about the constitutionality of the Poseidon proposal — one that readers can echo in a comment to the Coastal Commission if you submit it by 5:00 today!]
Poseidon Town:
Desal Water into the Ground is Money Down the Drain,
not “Reasonable Use.”
OCWD’s plans for desal-water distribution further violate California’s constitution on top of building an environmentally harmful project with no established need.
A Little Anthony and the Water Imperialists: This file photo by SoCal Water Wars shows
L-R: The late Phil Anthony, Harry Sidhu (currently mayor of Anaheim), and Steve Sheldon
(former Poseidon consultant.) All three were present at the July 23, 2014 planning meeting.
Anthony noted the absurdity of putting Poseidon’s expensive desal water into the groundwater basin.
Whether it’s a reasonable use of water or not will be the big question underlying the proposed Huntington Beach Poseidon ocean desalination project when it comes before the California Coastal Commission on May 12 for a pivotal but still less than determinative thumbs up or down vote.
The Commission’s staff of experts recommends project denial due to unmitigated environmental effects and “likely significant burdens on environmental justice communities” due to higher water bills.
If the $1.4 billion project is approved, the Orange County Water District (OCWD), the project’s lead agency and manager of the 60 million acre-foot local groundwater basin in north county, would buy 56,000 acre-feet of desalinated water a year for 30-35 years, regardless of need.
… [some important paragraphs skipped!]
The Reasonable Use Doctrine guides all the State’s environmental protection laws and policies at all levels of government, per Article 10, Section 2 of the California Constitution.
Recognizing the need for conservation, the Constitution states that “the waste or unreasonable use or unreasonable method of use of water be prevented.”
READ ALL OF THE REST AT THIS SUBSTACK LINK!
*You can pay them now….or pay them later!”
Check the flowers you put into that tap water and see how long they have held
up since Mother’s Day. Should have used bottle water Bunky!
As a person from Northern California central valley, the coastal commissions report is angering. It talks about economic justice when poor people’s wells are drying up throughout the valley. You talk about environmental justice and then build a huge aqueduct to carry water from the north to your swimming pools. If you want to see real poverty, visit my home in the central valley, get outside your Huntington beach million dollar houses. The Great Salt Lake is being dried up along with it’s brine shrimp as water is pulled from the Colorado river by Southern California users, depriving Utahns of water.
The coastal commissions report is incredibly myopic.
Random geography lesson, John. The Great Salt Lake is not in the Colorado River watershed. This is one thing you can’t blame Southern California for (not to worry, lots of other material to work from).
However, you can blame the residents and the government and the farmers of Utah for overdevelopment in the Salt Lake and Utah Valleys that sucks up the water flowing west from the Wasatch Range.
Both times I drove thru Salt Lake City (on my way down the 80 between San Francisco and New York) it was sunset. The Great Salt Lake looks really pretty at sunset.
I’ll be in Provo on Tuesday. I’ll wave to your pals.
My pals are colorful, salty ripples.
Orange County (and many other) opponents of Poseidon are not opposed to smaller-scale economically and environmentally responsible desalination projects. We actually have one such in Dana Point — built by a different company from Poseidon, which has already built and constructed a regrettable and widely reviled such project in Carlsbad.
Opponents of Poseidon are not averse to responsible projects — just to ones driven be greed and reckless indifference to the less wealthy areas of Orange County and especially to the people living around the construction site, with its concentration of chemical toxins.
If desalination plans are to be built, it should be in safe places, by companies who care about those who will be affected rather than just their own bottom lines (and by public entities if that’s the best option), and certainly not guaranteeing a healthy profit to firms with massive lobbying budgets that will be paid for by the poorer sections of our county.
If you read elsewhere in our blog, you’ll see that this water isn’t going to leave more water for the Central Valley: it’s either going right back into the ocean (as in Carlsbad) or into our groundwater — which it will foul.
You’re probably some sock puppet from Poseidon’s lobbyists rather than someone who just happened upon this blog from the central valley — but in case you’re legitimately who you say you are, you might ask yourself why you are willing to see people down here die for the sake of your almond trees.
Also, while you’re here: could you spread the word that you all should pay your farmworkers a living wage and give them safe and human working conditions as well? (No wonder you don’t care about poisoning Huntington Beach so long as it benefits you.)
And most of us down here, who’d be paying the bills for this boondoggle, do NOT live in million-dollar houses.
Thank you for the correct distinction between house and the insidious/ubiquitous “home.”