California Coastal Commission to Consider Staff Recommendation to Reject Proposed Harmful Ocean Water Desalination Facility

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

A Poseidon Adventure We Don't Need

By Gary A. Patton
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

Kermit the Frog famously lamented, "it's not easy being green." Poseidon Resources, a company proposing to build an environmentally-destructive ocean water desalination facility on the California coast, would love to have his problem.

Next week in San Diego, Poseidon Resources will try to explain to the California Coastal Commission why they should be granted a permit to build and operate a desalination facility in Carlsbad after the Commission's own staff report recommends denying their request.

The staff report, released last Friday, is spot on in its description of the potential negative effects of the desalination facility proposed by Poseidon. As we noted here last week, the project would cause serious environmental impacts, sucking in marine organisms through an open water intake and increasing stress on marine communities at the site of the facility's brine discharge. In addition, there are significant concerns about the project's contribution to global warming; while Poseidon Resources has recently claimed that the facility's greenhouse emissions will be offset, no detailed plan has yet been made available.

Please help us protect California's coastal environment by attending the upcoming California Coastal Commission hearing in San Diego to ask the Commissioners to follow their own staff's recommendation and reject the Poseidon proposal.