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Corporate Whiners protest Environmental Protection...the environment is always last on their list.
Because of Global Warming and Extreme Weather, there are problems we need to address without additional Environmental Destruction.
Is this solvable? Of course!
WHY ONE DECISION COULD DECIDE THE FUTURE OF DESALINATION IN CALIFORNIA
DECEMBER 10, 2016
The future of coastal desalination in California could be determined by the decision on permits for a plant in Huntington Beach, where regulators and the plant’s company have locked horns on the issue of subsurface intake pipes.
By Tony Davis, Newsdeeply.com
Scores of supporters and critics of a proposed desalination plant for Orange County, Calif., pack a meeting of the California Coastal Commission in Huntington Beach, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013. Amy Taxin, AP
A PROTRACTED CONFLICT over whether and how to protect fish from dying at desalination plants is clouding prospects for what would be California’s second large plant of this type – and for the future of desalination along the entire California coastline.
For years, a proposed Poseidon Resources desalination plant in Huntington Beach in Orange County has been kept in limbo. This has been due in part to disagreements over whether the plant should use conventional, surface-based intake pipes to take salt water directly from the ocean – intakes that already exist in a neighboring electric power plant – or use “subsurface intakes” that would suck in the saltwater underground.
The purpose of subsurface intakes is to prevent fish and other marine life from being trapped and killed in seawater flowing into the plant, a process known as entrainment. Another concern is impingement, in which fish are trapped against intake screens – juvenile fish typically can’t survive this for more than 24 hours. At least partly because of their higher construction costs, most large desalination plants worldwide don’t use subsurface intakes.
But now new California regulations governing desalination plants make subsurface intakes mandatory unless it can be shown they’re not economically and/or technically feasible. The new rules – the only such regulations in the world – are forcing additional delays for the proposed plant, which has been seeking state permits since 2001.
It’s clear that this case’s outcome will set a precedent for whether up to 15 proposed desalination plants are developed along the California coastline.
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