Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
May 7, 2008
Poseidon’s Delay: Coastal Commission waits 2 years for desal answers
Orange
Farm bill, water lead agenda for Washington
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Poseidon’s Delay: Coastal Commission waits 2 years for desal answers
Orange
By John Earl, Editor
An environmental scientist for the California Coastal Commission says that the cost of water to be produced by a desalination plant approved by the city of Huntington Beach has been greatly underestimated by the developer and that proposed mitigation measures for its impact on ocean marine life are inadequate.
The project was approved by the
The remarks were part of a letter to Poseidon Resources Inc., the multi-national corporate water corporation that will oversee construction of the plant that would suck in 100 million gallons of ocean water every day and convert it into 50 million gallons of drinking water. Poseidon plans to co-locate with the AES power generating plant on Newland Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway to take cost-saving advantage of the plant’s “once-through cooling” system to gather the ocean water it needs for conversion.
Once-through cooling systems are also used by 20 other antiquated power plants along the
A recent court ruling, as well as legislative trends and a resolution by the California State Lands Commission, are bringing once-through cooling to a close, sooner or later. “It’s the end of once-through cooling systems in the
Incomplete Application & Promises
The 7-page-letter, dated June 27, 2007, was a “Notice of Incomplete Application” for a Coastal Development permit and cited numerous instances where Poseidon had given incomplete information or made dubious claims about permits, environmental effects, environmentally friendly alternatives and costs related to the project in response to a similar request for information a year earlier. Nearly 2-years later, the information is still not forthcoming, according to the CCC’s Environmental Scientist, Tom Luster, who wrote the letter.
Poseidon’s desalination plant would take publicly owned ocean water, convert it to tap water, and sell it back to the public for a profit. Organized opponents to the project criticized the company for ignoring key environmental impact issues and questioned whether the plant would ever be built, considering rising costs of fossil fuel and electricity needed to operate it, and a lack of buyers for the expensive water-as high as $2,000 per acre-foot-it would produce.
Poseidon told the city of Huntington Beach that the project would cost (Poseidon) about $150 million in capital to build and promised it would produce water for sale at around $800 per acre-foot, but that amount was based on government subsidies that might not materialize.
Since then, Poseidon has claimed a cost of $355 million and water at $950 per acre-foot. But Luster’s letter challenges those estimates, stating they are much lower than estimated costs at other proposed and co-located facilities, and that “Poseidon’s response does not provide an adequate basis for these substantially lower costs.”
Luster told the Voice that $1,400 - $1,500 per acre foot is “what we are expecting for that project,” about 4 or 5 times the cost of local well water used in Huntington Beach and 3 times the cost of recycled drinking water that will be produced by the Orange County Sanitation District.
The letter attributes Poseidon’s lower cost estimate in part to its claim that it will pay $0.07 per kilowatt-hour for electricity needed to run the facility. “This appears to be a much lower rate than is available for the proposed project,” it says. The cost would actually increase about $50 per acre-foot for each $0.01 per kilowatt-hour, “so the published rates would increase your proposed water costs by at least several hundred dollars per acre-foot,” the letter states.
Luster asked Poseidon to supply a copy of its contract with AES, which it had refused to do in the when asked by the city of Huntington Beach, along with a sample electrical bill to help clarify how it arrived at its unlikely cost estimate.
The letter also challenges Poseidon’s assertion that mitigation for environmental damage already taken by the AES power plant is sufficient, since the desalination plant would be using the same water intake system and in theory would not create addition environmental stress.
The AES mitigation was limited, however, to a smaller amount of water flow coming from two of the plant’s four generating units, while the desalination plant would add significantly more water flow than previously studied, the letter says. Besides, it states, the Coastal Commission did not approve the AES mitigation, which does not generally meet its standards.
Other points made in the letter:
Poseidon’s own research shows that a subsurface ocean water intake system, favored by environmentalists, would be economically feasible, while creating “fewer adverse environmental impacts” than the company’s proposal.
Poseidon has not provided sufficient information describing or providing “feasible mitigation measures” for the desalination plant’s future effects on coastal resources from the estimated 200 - 250 million pounds of carbon dioxide it will emit into the air.
Nor has Poseidon provided permits to create a 12-mile-long pipeline needed to transport the desalinated water it produces through
In fact, the Voice has learned, Poseidon is currently negotiating franchise agreements with Mesa Consolidated Water and the city of
Multiple attempts by the Voice to get a response from Poseidon were no more successful than the Coastal Commission’s efforts.
In an e-mail address to other Poseidon CEOs and obtained by the Voice, Senior Vice President Nikolay Voutchkov, wrote, in response to written questions from the Voice: “Let me know if you need any support in responding on these questions. We have already addressed them in our last response to the CCC. This guy has an outdated info.”
But in an e-mail that followed, Chief Executive Officer, Andrew Kingman, replied: “no reply necessary, John Earl is not a friend and we won’t get anywhere with him.”#
Farm bill, water lead agenda for Washington
By Ching Lee, Assistant Editor
Led by California Farm Bureau Federation First Vice President Paul Wenger, left, a delegation of farmers and ranchers met last week in Washington, D.C. with lawmakers and other high-ranking officials, including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, right, and Lloyd Day, administrator of USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service.
As Congress continues to struggle to write a new farm bill, Farm Bureau leaders from throughout the state took their concerns to Capitol Hill last week in hopes of influencing lawmakers on crucial issues affecting
The 17-member delegation, joined by California Farm Bureau Federation officers and staff, worked the halls of Congress to discuss topics ranging from the farm bill, Clean Water Act, immigration and trade.
The April 28-30 trip to Washington, D.C. is part of an ongoing effort by CFBF to develop leadership within the organization as well as provide congressional and agency leaders the opportunity to hear directly from California growers and ranchers on issues that are important to them.
One of those issues is passage of the 2007 Farm Bill, which Congress is still negotiating this week. The 2002 Farm Bill expired in September, and since then the law has been extended six times to allow lawmakers to finish a bill that President Bush will find acceptable.
Frustrated with the bill's progress, the president has asked Congress to extend the current law for a year or longer. The move would delay benefits to
A main focus of the Farm Bureau trip was to urge lawmakers to find common ground and move the farm bill forward.
"Extending the 2002 Farm Bill beyond this year is not an option for
Some key issues remain unresolved for the bill, which is expected to cost nearly $300 billion over five years, with 70 percent of the total directed at food stamps and nutrition. One sticking point involves government crop supports, which the Bush administration has sought to limit. So far the plan that the House and Senate have proposed falls short of the reforms that the president has suggested.
Mary Kay Thatcher, farm policy specialist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, in a meeting with the CFBF delegation, said there's a 50/50 chance that Bush will veto the bill.
Another issue that dominated talks with CFBF leaders and legislators and their staff involved the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act, or H.R. 2421, which the Farm Bureau opposes. If the bill passes, it would greatly extend federal regulatory control over wetlands and related water quality issues, opponents say.
This legislation would delete the word "navigable" from the Clean Water Act and broaden the regulatory reach of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to cover all "intrastate waters" and "activities affecting these waters." Under the proposal, the EPA and ACE would regulate nearly every wet area in the nation, including an estimated 55 million acres of prior converted cropland.
Opponents claim if passed, the law would require farmers and ranchers to obtain federal permits to carry out their daily land management activities in areas traditionally reserved for the states. The law also would greatly increase the cost and time associated with managing stock ponds, ditches, gutters and possibly groundwater.
Under the law, landowners would likely need to acquire a federal permit to place a culvert in a ditch or implement conservation practices such as installing buffer strips or restoring wet areas that have no hydrological connection to a traditionally navigable waterway. Farmers say this is counterproductive to their efforts to improve the environment.
Jason Eells, who manages his family's winery and vineyard in
"We pump out of the
Other farmers say the new proposals would further tie their hands and prevent the conversion of farmlands from one crop to another.
"We all want clean water and clean air," said
Meanwhile,
The rule affects employers who receive no-match letters from the Social Security Administration. These letters tell employers that the name and Social Security number of an employee do not match Social Security records. Under the threat of crippling fines, agricultural employers could be forced to fire key workers. This could start at the height of the summer employment season, farmers say.
"Reaching a legislative solution in an election year won't be easy," said Jack King, CFBF manager of national affairs. "But we have no choice but to push forward and keep the issue alive."
The Farm Bureau continues to push for passage of the Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security Act, or AgJOBS, and considers the legislation a viable option for dealing with the agricultural labor situation. The bill's author, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, is exploring ways to modify the legislation to gain additional support.
In a meeting with CFBF leaders, Feinstein said there is "good solid support in the community" for AgJOBS, but much uncertainty looms regarding how to carry the legislation forward.
"The bottom line is, there are a lot of people here who don't want to touch any issue related to immigration," Feinstein told the CFBF delegation.
Despite these challenges, CFBF leaders pressed lawmakers for a congressional solution that would allow foreign workers to come into the United States to fill jobs where there are no domestic workers and return to their home countries when the work is complete. They say they support improved border enforcement, but enforcement by itself won't solve the country's border problems.
"One of the messages I've been delivering is, don't just give us the stick but also offer us the carrot," said
Expanding overseas markets has always been a top priority for
The
In
Under the negotiated free trade agreement with
Despite ongoing political hurdles on issues that affect
"I think it's our duty as Farm Bureau members to continually be at the table and communicate the ag perspective to our lawmakers," said
David Van Klaveren, who has an ornamental nursery business and is new to the
"This was more of a lobbying effort, to put a face on the issues," he said. "And I believe many of the senators and congressmen and women responded to that. They really listened to our personal issues. I believe it was eye-opening for many of them." #
http://www.cfbf.com/agalert/AgAlertStory.cfm?ID=1032&ck=995E1FDA4A2B5F55EF0DF50868BF2A8F
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