Questions pile up for Carlsbad desal plant

Control board again raises environmental concerns

North County Times

By Gig Conaughton

March 2, 2008

For the second time in three months, a government agency has raised environmental concerns about a plan to take seawater out of the ocean off Carlsbad and turn it into drought-proof drinking water.

And for the second time, the agency in question has already approved, albeit conditionally, the desalinization plant.

The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, the region's water-pollution police force, is the latest agency to raise environmental concerns about the Carlsbad plant.

In a recent letter, the control board said it wanted more information about how the plant would minimize harm to fish and the environment ---- 21 months after the board awarded the plant a discharge permit.

In November, the California Coastal Commission awarded the plant a permit, on the condition that its backers, Poseidon Resources Inc., answer more questions about the same subjects.

Environmental groups last week immediately said the control board's action proved environmental worries were valid, and that agencies were moving too quickly to conditionally approve the plant.

"It's absurd to us that any agency could pre-approve a project of this magnitude without having this information already tied down," said Marco Gonzalez, an environmental lawyer active in the Surfrider Foundation, which has sued to overturn the commission's permit approval.

Poseidon downplayed the ongoing questions.

Poseidon Vice President Peter MacLaggan said the company has legitimate plans to ease environmental harm, and that all questions would be answered in coming months.

"What I take away from all of this is we haven't done a very good job of explaining our story," MacLaggan said. "That's what has prompted the questions."

Big project
If the $300 million, 50 million-gallon-per-day Carlsbad plant is built, it would be the largest seawater desalinization plant in the Western Hemisphere.

Poseidon said late last year that it hoped to start building this year and open by 2010.

Last week it said that that timeline had changed to building in 2009 and opening by 2011 but that the change had nothing to do with the continuing environmental questions.

Tom Luster, the coastal commission's seawater desalination expert, said there were as many as 20 other desalination projects in the works that could eventually seek their own permits.

Drama
The plant's fate, and the permitting process, are part of an important water-supply drama.

Desertlike Southern California has long relied upon imported water: from the Colorado River, and from Northern California's State Water Project.

But both of those supply systems are troubled.

The Colorado River has suffered eight years of drought. And Southern Californians are facing cuts to their Northern California supplies by up to 30 percent for the foreseeable future because of a federal court ruling to protect an endangered fish, the delta smelt.

Water officials around the state ---- and Poseidon ---- say that seawater desalinization would be an important new supply and could never hurt the ocean because its immense volume of water would dilute harmful effects.

Environmental groups disagree and say such plants could destroy California's coast.

Gonzalez said last week that that means that permitting agencies should take every step to make sure they recognize all the possible environmental harm Poseidon's plant could cause and how to address those problems ---- to "get it right the first time."

Intake worries
Most of the plant's environmental questions revolve around how it will get the seawater it will turn into drinking water.

The proposed plant would be located at Carlsbad's Encina Power Station, and use the power station's "once-through-cooling" system.

Encina already sucks in millions of gallons of water from the sea, pumps it around its electricity-producing turbine engines to cool them, and then spits it back out to the ocean.

Poseidon planned to use 304 million gallons of that a day to force through high-tech filtering membranes.

Fifty million gallons a day would be turned into drinking water. The rest, including the extracted brine, would be sent back to sea.

However, NRG Energy, the company that operates Encina, has applied to move to an air-cooled process by 2010 because a recent court case and studies say ocean-cooling systems hurt ocean life, killing fish, vegetation, and microscopic life.

Poseidon has a deal to continue to use the existing sea intake and outfall system. But environmental groups have said that should not be allowed.

As he has in the past, MacLaggan said last week that the plant would only kill about 2 1/2 pounds of fish per day and some phytoplankton, fish larvae and other microscopic organisms. He said the company plans to offset that harm by creating 37 acres of new wetland habitat in a joint San Dieguito River Valley program.

Control board questions
But the control board said Feb. 19 that it didn't like the San Dieguito plan.

Control board officials said that even though they granted the Carlsbad plant a discharge permit in June 2006, Poseidon would violate that permit and risk fines if it built the plant and started operating it before satisfying the control board's questions.

Eric Becker, a control board engineer, said the agency wants Poseidon to create new wetlands or other environmental habitat in Carlsbad's Agua Hedionda Lagoon ---- which is where the Encina plant's cooling system is situated ---- not San Dieguito.

MacLaggan said there isn't anywhere in Agua Hedionda to do that.

Meanwhile, the control board's executive director, John Robertus, said Poseidon's 37-acre offset plan amounted to a one-time $5 million purchase to offset unforeseen environmental harm over at least 30 years.

Robertus said that wasn't good enough. Southern California Edison's San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, he said, has had to pay upward of $100 million in recent years because of environmental harm it caused.

"I'd rather have mitigation that is ongoing and dynamic," Robertus said last week.

MacLaggan said the $5 million cap was misleading.

"We would not put a financial cap on our commitment," he said. "We were not saying that's all we're willing to spend. What we said was the harm would be more than fully compensated at 37 acres."

Luster and the commission also have questions about the 37-acre plan.

In a letter sent to Poseidon last week, Luster said the commission needed more information about Poseidon's environmental studies.

The letter said the commission could not tell how Poseidon determined creating the 37 acres would offset the fish and larvae the plant would kill. Because of that, the letter said, the commission could not judge whether the 37 acre-plan was adequate.

MacLaggan said Poseidon hoped to answer all the questions from the control board, the commission and a third agency ---- the state Lands Commission ---- by midsummer and finalize all of its needed permits.

The state Lands Commission, like the Coastal Commission, wants more information about how Poseidon will offset the greenhouse gases the plant will emit.

"This is just all just part of the process, outlined by the regulators who need to methodically work through this," MacLaggan said.

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