WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE, AND NOT ANY DROP TO DO THE DISHES: Shrugging at Drought. Zany as ever, the California Coastal Commission wants to scuttle a desalination plant that could meet 16 percent of Orange County’s water needs over concerns about plankton and “environmental justice.”
The proposed Poseidon Water facility could meet 16 percent of the water needs of Orange County, with its 3.1-million population. A similar facility down the coast in Carlsbad meets 9 percent of the water needs of San Diego County’s 3.3-million residents. That’s nothing to scoff at in the midst of water rationing, but those who think that way obviously aren’t fixated on the plight of local plankton.
The Surfrider Foundation complains that these facilities’ water-intake systems “cause marine life mortality through impingement (pinning and trapping fish or other species against the intake structure screens) and entrainment (when intake pipes suck in and kill small species like plankton, fish eggs, and larvae) of species, and risks disrupting an area’s entire ecological balance.”
Well, OK, environmentalists will act like environmentalists. That group once noted that the Pacific Ocean isn’t a limitless resource which, although technically correct I suppose, is one of the silliest arguments imaginable considering the small sips that any de-salter takes out of the mighty ocean. But the Coastal Commission is a powerful state agency.
The actual commissioners can overrule the staff next month, but this report is the latest egregious attempt by an agency to kill the facility, and its arguments are equally nonsensical. Here’s an example: “Building this project in this location is inconsistent with the type of sea level rise adaptation and risk-avoidance planning encouraged by the state and required by the Coastal Act.”
In other words, the commission is concerned that a facility that would turn seawater into drinking water is being located next to the sea where, um, climate change could eventually raise the sea level and flood the project (and everything else along the coast). I haven’t read all of Poseidon’s filings, but I’m pretty sure the company, its investors, and insurers have taken such risks into consideration.
The late P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that “You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.” And in socialist California, you can’t get sufficient water in a state that butts up against an entire ocean of the stuff.