RWQCB votes to approve Poseidon but with conditions.
R4RD is not happy with yesterday’s Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB) hearing. But we will keep at it. The upcoming Coastal Commission hearing will be Poseidon’s biggest hurdle.
During yesterday’s RWQCB hearing the board members spent a great deal of time wrestling with the fact, among its many other problems, Poseidon desal proponents are unreliable and you can’t trust them.
Therefore, while the RWQCB did approve Poseidon’s permits, they did put some pre-project conditions in place.
You probably know this already, but Poseidon has been pulling water and marine life out of the ocean in the Carlsbad area for nearly 6 years but has done next to none of the environmental mitigation they were required to do. Therefore, in Huntington Beach, Poseidon can only move forward after they design the bulk of their mitigation and bring it back for approval by the RWQCB. Only then can Posiedon begin to discharge wastewater into the ocean.
That is weaker than the original proposal from the RWQCB staff which was to prohibit the company from polluting local waters at all until mitigation fully nailed down. And far weaker than Ocean Plan guidelines designed to assure marine life is adequately protected. However, Poseidon objected to those provisions saying they would kill the project then used political pressure to get what they wanted, which was easier permit conditions.
There are some really good articles about the meeting’s outcome in the Los Angeles Times, Voice of OC, and Orange County Register that do a good job of summarizing the hearing and I urge you to take a moment to read them. And don’t despair and don’t give up. Trust us when I tell you that corrupt politically driven projects like Poseidon aren’t easy to defeat but they can be defeated. The next step is an appeal to the State Water Board, then Poseidon has to go back to the State Lands Commission.
Poseidon also must face the Coastal Commission, which has indicated they want much more mitigation (mitigation that Poseidon says will kill the project) and will closely examine the many problems with Poseidon’s proposed site including earthquake faults, flooding, and sea-level rise.
And there will be lawsuits that will further delay Poseidon and make their Ponzi scheme even less certain.
It’s not easy facing down a multi-national corporation whose interest in our coast is to exploit and profit from it. But with your help, we have kept Poseidon out of our community and off our coast for over 15 years. We just have to keep at it and we will.