By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Voice

A plant based diet beats a traditional meat based diet hands down when it comes to trimming one’s contribution to greenhouse gases, but not everyone is willing to plunge headlong into a life of tofu dogs and bean burgers.

No doubt there are even plenty self proclaimed vegetarians out there who guiltily sneak in some fried chicken, pork chops or a tuna melt from time to time and face self-recriminations afterward for satisfying such cravings at the expense of a warming planet.

The good news for either lapsed vegetarians or meat eaters with an environmental conscience is that meats and dairy products are not all created equal when it comes to the quantity of greenhouse gases (GHG) produced. In fact, a study just released by the non profit organization Environmental Working Group (EWG) and titled “Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change + Health” reveals that by avoiding just the three worst GHG offenders – lamb, beef and cheese – even hardcore meat eaters can make a sizable dent in their diet’s climate change footprint.

EWG, in partnership with CleanMetrics, an environmental analysis firm, examined the “cradle to grave” lifecycle, from farm to retail to plate to disposal, of 20 popular foods in four categories – meats, fish, dairy and vegetable protein – and compared the GHG produced by each. Continue Reading

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Voice

Under a loosely-worded Huntington Beach “nuisance” code ordinance, a clothesline could be considered a public nuisance if “unsightly by reason of its condition or location.” A resident’s complaint would trigger assessment by a code enforcement officer who would determine whether a clothesline was in violation. Editor

During the Leave It to Beaver era of the late 1950s, most homes certainly had a clothesline and probably no one thought much about whether it offended their neighbors. It’s a safe assumption that June Cleaver, the perfect homemaker, would have taken issue with anyone even hinting her clothesline was an eyesore.

Then fast forward a half century to the present where the majority of Americans have abandoned the clothesline in favor of electric or gas dryers and homeowners associations (HOAs) routinely prohibit clotheslines or impose such restrictions as to effectively ban them. One can only guess what June would have said to that, even absent her knowing about the threats from global climate change and the pressing need to reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels.

Few today will dispute that tossing a load of wet clothes into a clothes dryer is more convenient than pinning up clothes, one by one, and surveys confirm that most people living in communities governed by HOAs have no problem abiding by the restrictions on clotheslines from the standpoint of curb appeal or property values.

However, interest in reducing the oversized energy footprint of Americans – twice that of people living in the European Union – has given rise in a handful of states to so-called “right-to-dry” laws that rein in restrictions HOAs or other entities can impose on residents’ freedom to use clotheslines. California is not among them, however, despite its sunny weather and reputation for environmental progressiveness. Continue Reading

By Conner Everts
Desal Response Group

Drinking water from the Sea?

Sounds like a great idea. JFK once said that it would be a greater achievement than putting a man on the moon, and most polls have shown a 70 percent acceptance rate of the idea.

So what is the problem?

The corollary to JFK’s statement would be “when economically and environmentally feasible” and therein is the challenge.  However, the first question that should be asked is do we need ocean water desalination (often called desal) in California and would it hurt or harm the environment compared to its alternatives?

In 2006 there were 29 proposals for ocean desal projects along the California coast, with many attached to old coastal power plants, now there are only nine.  While industry proponents blame California’s protective environmental regulations and a few environmentalists’ opposition, there were three main issues that stalled the proposals.

First, despite the State Desal Task Force convened by legislation, there is no consensus on a regulatory order or state-wide direction. So each proposal lumbered through the multi-agency process.

That’s as it should be because if there is a large scale desal plant built in California it will be the first on the Pacific coast and largest in the Western Hemisphere.  The first proponent out of the gate was Poseidon, a private corporation from Connecticut that failed with its first desal project – the largest in the nation at 25 million gallons a day – in  Tampa Bay, Florida, and then proposed two more plants, each with twice that capacity, one in Huntington Beach in Orange County and the other in Carlsbad in north San Diego county.

While working hard to gather political support for its southern California desal projects, Poseidon failed to respond to repeated information requests by the Coastal Commission or to follow its permitting guidelines. Meanwhile, local opposition grew and water agencies weighed into issues of the marine environment, which they little understood, and were forced to navigate California’s complex and arcane water supply laws as well.

Second, conceived in a time of drought, the most recent crop of desal proposals depended on a fear of limited water supply while demand was high for new development. This was especially true where desal plants were proposed on the coast, thus allowing entry points for previously undeveloped areas with limited water supply.

With the collapse of the global economy, developments now sit idle and the need for desal as a redundant water supply for more growth is being questioned.  Promoted as an offset to water pumped over the Tehachapis and therefore reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the opposite is true. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) states in its subsidy contract that the water produced by desal would not curtail deliveries of any imported water source.  Rather blood would be let on the floors of the MWD boardroom before anyone at MWD would give up any sacrosanct water rights.

Furthermore, the promises that these proposed desal plants would offset water taken from the SF Bay Delta turned out to be false. Given the long history of getting water back to fish and the environment, there is no regulatory process to make that happen. Just look at the 20 years of litigation that has taken place over Mono Lake.

Third: first things first. There are untapped and cost-effective local water resources that must be developed and that have environmental benefits, unlike desal, such as maximizing serious water conservation and water reclamation, capturing and treating urban and storm-water runoff, expanding now legal greywater and rainwater cistern systems, and fixing leaky infrastructure or pipes.

Combine that with a systems approach with watershed management and we begin to get to the point that Australia, Spain, and Israel did before they invested in desal – which meant reducing per capita water demand to 30-50 gallons per day. Compare that to 174 gallons for California as a whole and 121 gallons for Los Angeles.

Many areas across the state, including Los Angeles and Long Beach, have had serious reductions in water demand and eliminated the need for desal—it’s not in Los Angeles’ 20 year supply plan and Long Beach is reconsidering after careful research.

California spent $50 million of Prop. 50 water bond monies on researching this issue and while not all the grant results have been revealed the emerging consensus is that proponents’ promise of a technological breakthrough that makes desal feasible or necessary hasn’t been realized. This is a case of its not the technology, stupid, it is the lack economic considerations and available capital.

And then it rain, and rained, and continues to rain.  Reservoirs filled and spilled.  Snow pack reached record levels in the Rockies, from where a portion of our imported supply originates.  If we had only realized the potential to capture rainwater and redistribute stormwater back into our depleted underground aquifers, this would have been a great winter to replenish the bank of locally stored water.

A quick historical perspective shows that ocean water desal plans come and go in California.  In the 60s and 70s it was twin nuclear power plant islands to be built offshore and provide all the water we needed and a small plant that was sent from the navel base in Point Loma to Guantanamo in Cuba.

In the 80s and 90s it was the Santa Barbara plant that was built in the middle of the six-year drought and was idled before it ever was connected by El  Niño spring. While it is still being paid for it is more cost effective not to run it.

At Catalina Island in the late 80s a small plant was built as a back up to allow a developer to build condos.  It sat idle for many years until Southern California Edison took it over, and in the only place where they sell water it takes 70 percent of the island’s electricity to produce 20 percent of its water.

Internationally, where there is often no other choice, limits have been reached but with a price. Australia is now deeply indebted for billions for plants that sit idle and have been flooded.  Even the Middle East is having problems with desal with huge demands for energy and subsidized water in Saudi Arabia and discharge levels that increase salinity and therefore energy demands in enclosed areas.

Ocean desal is promoted heavily by a cabal of membrane manufacturers, including GE, power plants operators hoping to keep their old fish-killing machines operating, water agencies looking for large capital projects built with some else’s money, engineering consultants and even Las Vegas.

But the bloom is off the issue. It looks good on the outside but once you delve into the inside there are problems, like fast food might sound good at the moment of hunger but the results of eating it are negative.  Investing in the current crop of desal plants is like buying an old Hummer with today’s gas prices.

Concerned citizens who organized statewide and locally to inform the public and fight the desalination surge can now declare victory and focus back on appropriate multi-benefit local water resources.  It does not mean we won’t continue to monitor these projects but to focus on only the fight would validate an issue that, once again, has passed away. After ten years, this time, we should celebrate a successful fight that brought this to the light of day and the fact that California is not ready for ocean desal and it is not ready for us.

There are many other issues around desal including energy intensity, huge marine and fishery impacts and the alternatives, drinking water quality, sea-level rise with industrializing the coast and the true costs of water. Go to the website www.desalresponsegroup.org for more than you would want to know and links to the many references made in this article.

By Ian Douglas
Special to the Surf City Voice

Australians are battling to come to terms with the impacts of the oft-criticized process of national water reform. The ongoing, abrasive debate surrounding the Basin Plan being drafted by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, outrage over the spiraling costs of currently redundant desalination plants and public protests about sky-rocketing water charges typify the predicament.

Australian water reform was conceived in 1994 by the Council of Australian Governments; nurtured by the prevailing mantra that free-market exposure was the ultimate panacea for undercapitalized and inefficient public utilities. COAG went one giant leap further, in deciding to establish a national water market; arguing that this would direct water to its most productive use.

In the years since these sweeping changes were announced, the wisdom of applying free market principles to the management of an essential natural resource has been largely discredited by events overseas: In the water-supply sector, major corporate players have been accused and, in more than a few instances, convicted of price-gouging, anti-competitive behavior, corrupt practice and fraud. On all continents there are moves to wrest control from private corporations. Globally, more than 90 per cent of water services are now publicly owned.

In Australia there are valid concerns that water reform is leaving crucial decisions, with respect to the “where”, “when” and “how” of water distribution, in the hands of entities whose priority is profit rather than socially and environmentally responsible water use. Questions are being raised as to why our governments have been prepared to implement these radical policies without seeking and obtaining prior electoral mandate and in the absence of adequate constitutional protection of water.

The unbundling of water rights from land title has been the lynchpin of water reform, enabling water entitlements to be leased, treated as equity, bequeathed or permanently traded. In less than three years’ time, there will be no limit on the volume of water access entitlements that can be traded permanently between hydrologically connected irrigation districts anywhere in Australia.

Australian water is now effectively commoditized: allocated to whoever is willing to pay the going price. The market cares not whether you intend to drip-irrigate vegetables, cultivate cotton by flood irrigation, water golf courses – or merely hold your allocation as an investment for a rainy, or not so rainy, day. We are told that water trading will promote the allocation of water to “high value” uses, but the concept of “value” is far from precise. Large-scale agribusiness enterprises may reap high returns from the water they are well positioned to acquire, but their profits are largely internalized, increasingly to overseas interests, minimizing benefit to local communities.  More traditional farming may result in lower profit at the farm gate, but is believed to have a more marked flow-on effect on local economies.

In 2008-9, water trades totalled 2.74 billion dollars. In the same year, whilst urban water users faced severe restrictions, water use for irrigated agriculture increased 3 per cent on the previous year, but the gross value of production from irrigation fell by 358 million dollars.In that year, following localised inflows into the northern Darling catchment, but whilst the vast majority of the Basin was enduring the peak of the worst drought in living memory, the cultivation of cotton and rice consumed 981 gigalitres of water.

This figure equates to the combined water consumption of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide (990 gigalitres) over the same period, to produce a crop with a combined value of less than 650 million dollars, in a year when the gross value of national agricultural production was in excess of $46 billion.

In consuming around 850 gigalitres of water, 23 per cent of the total volume diverted for irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin, the 2008-9 cotton crop contributed only 4 per cent to the total value of agricultural production in the Basin. Our self-sufficiency in terms of food production also suffered: while the value of the cotton crop increased by 198 per cent over the previous year, irrigated vegetable production fell by over 350 million dollars.

Sen. Lou Correa cuddles up to Poseidon CEO Scott Maloni to support desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Photo Arturo Tolenttino for SCV.

Unrestrained exploitation effectively hamstrung the Murray-Darling Basin Authority, and its predecessor the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, in its statutory responsibility to manage the Basin’s water resources in the national interest, and dramatically impaired the inherent ability of the Murray-Darling river system to resist the effects of prolonged drought.

In 2005, Wendy Craik, Chief Executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, confirmed the impotence of her organisation admitting, “We just have to hope it pours with rain”. Two years later, then Prime Minister, John Howard, refusing to deviate from market-based water management and resisting calls to invoke emergency powers, urged the nation to pray for rain. For eight long years, the nation’s most vital river was not allowed to flow to the sea.

The water market conspicuously failed to live up to the expectations of the National Water Initiative, driving down water storages in the Murray-Darling Basin to critically low levels at a time when conservation should have been paramount. The dire consequences for the environment, communities and economy of the Basin were clear for all to see.

In recent months, the raft of resignations from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority – including both the Chair and CEO – the distancing of recently appointed Chair and the Federal Water Minister from the Guide to the Draft Basin Plan, and the current Senate Inquiry into the Provisions of the 2007 Water Act, are further indications of the resolve of proponents of market-driven water reform.

The pressure being exerted by pro-marketeers was reconfirmed just last week, with the disclosure that the Authority is expected to recommend a paltry 2,800 gigalitre increase in environmental water allocation; prompting the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists to pull out of the Basin Plan consultation process, stating that it did not wish to be associated with an initiative which was destined to fail and waste billions of dollars.

The number of offshore players active in Australia’s water market bears testament to the rich pickings to be made speculating on the nation’s water reserves. It is believed than around 300 million dollars worth of water licences are currently in the hands of investors and this amount is steadily increasing. However it is impossible to confirm the precise figure: the National Water Commission has advised Fair Water Use that the Water Act prohibits public access to details on water entitlement holders.

Unlike the majority of our traditional farmers, investors are typically guided by global market trends and not merely the prevailing cost of Australian water. There are genuine concerns that, as more speculators, multinational agribusinesses and financial institutions enter the market, the inherent variability in water prices will be potentiated, particularly during drought; threatening the viability of previously profitable rural businesses and increasing pressure on rural communities.

The website of one such organization, US-based, Summit Global Management, contains the following observation: “Water is the most essential life-sustaining substance on earth and the most critical industrial input to the world’s economy. Demand for clean water has expanded unrelentingly as populations soar and societies modernize, and we now face crisis-level shortages for this most basic and necessary resource.”

In 2009, Summit Global’s chief marketing officer, Matt Dickerson, famously stated “There are few areas where we can execute our strategy, but Australia is one of them”. Summit, which in 2009 acquired at least 20 million dollars worth of permanent entitlements to Australian water, last month announced, through its Adelaide-based agent Blue Sky Water Partners, that it is seeking an additional 100 million dollars worth of water rights, focused on main systems such as the Murray-Darling.

In 2010, Australian-based Causeway Asset Management commenced a global drive to raise 100 million dollars of investment capital, to be used to acquire permanent entitlements to Murray-Darling water, stating: “There is a chronic supply/demand imbalance for Australian water which will result in higher water prices. Owning Australian Water Entitlements provides investors with direct exposure to water prices”.

It is clear that such investors are targeting the high returns to be made under leaseback arrangements during periods of water scarcity – an all too regular occurrence in this country. Where is the fundamental national benefit of exposing our water to such activity? What will be the impacts on the farming community, public water supplies and the environment?

In a statement on urban water policy released last month, the Chair of the National Water Commission, the statutory body responsible for driving the process of water reform, urged further deregulation and the construction of more desalination plants and dams – but tellingly made no mention of initiatives to reduce consumption in a country which, in 2004, was rated as the third largest per capita user of water in the world.

This blind commitment to growth, which also suffuses the policy platforms of the major parties, is being used to justify public-private partnerships and the construction of ill-conceived and untenably costly water infrastructure, most notoriously desalination plants. Our governments appear quite comfortable entering into public-private partnerships with multinationals whose track record in terms of corporate responsibility on the global stage is, at best, in-glorious.

In July last year, the Water Services Association projected that increased urban water consumption through to 2025, as a result of a 47 per cent hike in Australia’s population, to 31 million, could largely be met by the combined output of existing desalination plants and those currently under construction. Australians continue to be massaged into accepting this high tech, but inefficient and environmentally toxic industry; governments insisting that desalination is necessary to ensure water security, whilst largely ignoring the potential of “greener” and more efficient alternatives.

It is highly significant that the Productivity Commission itself has recently criticized the move towards desalination plants on economic grounds alone, irrespective of the environmental costs.

Following the change of government in Victoria, it has been revealed that the water bills of Victorian households are set to double over the next five years, as a direct result of costs associated with the Wonthaggi desalination plant. Irrespective of whether the plant is required to operate, Victorian taxpayers face a bill of close to 20 billion dollars over the next thirty years. When former premier Steve Bracks first announced the plant in June 2007, Victorians were informed that it would cost $3.1 billion.

In December last year, the South Australian Water Minister, Paul Caica, confirmed that operational costs of the Port Stanvac desalination plant are projected to total $130 million per year. This figure is additional to construction costs of $1.8 billion. It bears stating that the Government could currently acquire permanent water licenses for 100 gigalitres, the maximum output of the plant, for around $150 million.

In attempts to stave-off persistent criticism of “white-elephant” infrastructure, it is probable that conservation of urban water supplies will continue to be a low government priority, other than during periods of severe drought.

Last year, Mr Caica was also quoted as stating, “I have always said that we will consider lifting the restrictions when the desal plant comes online”.

In 2007, the value of state-owned water assets was estimated at 70 billion dollars: clearly a major temptation for state-governments seeking to balance their budgets.

Nationwide, the corporatization of water utilities has resulted in price hikes and an accent on fixed rather than consumption-based charging; stimulating concerted public protests, such as those currently taking place in south-east Queensland, amid fears that corporatization is a precursor to privatization.

To date, South Australia is the only state to have dabbled with privatization of water supplies – and Adelaide consumers have literally been paying the price: last year the State Government announced that it would not be renewing its contract with United Water, a wholly owned subsidiary of Paris-based, water colossus Veolia Environment, due to allegations of over-charging, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Nonetheless, publications such as that released by Deloittes in March 2010 seem to be priming Australians for the progressive sell-off of public water utilities.

It bears repeating that the stated aim of water reform is “to implement a strategic framework to achieve an efficient and sustainable water industry“: but on whose terms? – and to whose benefit?

Despite the fact that polling has indicated that at least 70% of Australians are opposed to it, water privatization is being imposed on the nation, under the guise of water reform; as a result of a closed-door agreement made, nearly twenty years ago, by the then Prime Minister, State Premiers, Territory Chief Ministers and the President of the Australian Local Government Association.

Water reform need not and should not equate to privatization, a process largely incompatible with the protection of water as a public good. Australians have the right to indicate which path they wish to follow, via state-by-state plebiscite if necessary.

Free-trade agreements, which have laid out the welcome mat to overseas speculators, should be renegotiated or scrapped, at least insofar as they apply to water.  This is consistent with data released by the Productivity Commission last month revealing that the benefits of free-trade agreements are oversold, creating unrealistic expectations and resulting in only small increases in national income.

Socially responsible water reform cannot proceed in the absence of sound legislated protection of water as a common good.  In 2009, the High Court of Australia found that there was “a common law notion that water, like light and air, is common property not especially amenable to private ownership and best vested in a sovereign state”. First drafted over a century ago, our Constitution does not refer to water rights other than related in very general terms to navigation, conservation and irrigation. Section 100 requires amendment if the nation’s water is to be adequately protected in the 21^st century and beyond.

Irrespective of whether the 1994 vintage of COAG had a full understanding of the implications of its decision, sincere governments would now admit that water reform is privatizing an all-too-finite and easily abused natural resource – and, by so-doing, poses a serious threat to Australia’s water future.

Ian Douglas is national coordinator of Fair Water Use (Australia). He is currently national coordinator of Fair Water Use (Australia), an independent and national lobby group, formed in early 2008 by Australians who share the vision of a revived Murray-Darling basin and the sustainable environmental, community and economic benefits that would flow from its recovery.

By David Rosenfeld
DC Bureau
Wednesday, 06 April 2011

When it comes to the future of desalinated water in California, San Diego County is facing a reality check. In agreements signed years ago, nine local water agencies brokered sweetheart deals with Poseidon Resources, an investor-owned Connecticut company that has been planning to build and operate a desalination plant in Carlsbad for the past 12 years.

The agreements guaranteed those nine agencies would not pay the true cost of desalinated ocean water – the most costly form of tap water on the planet – until the costs of imported water was even greater. And at that time, they would split the difference for up to 30 years once the plant was up and running.

But those contracts, as they appeared, were too good to be true. They were so good, in fact, for the water agencies that it made the project financially unfeasible, resulting in a near junk bond rating last year as Poseidon prepared to float $530 million in tax-exempt private activity bonds.

So the bond sales were put on hold and the contracts were renegotiated with Poseidon asking the San Diego County Water Authority for an additional subsidy and possibly to buy the nearly $700 million plant if there are future problems. (Poseidon had trouble with their desalination plant in Tampa Bay, Floridaand the Tampa Bay Water Authority had to take over that project.)

Rather than pass-through millions of dollars in subsidies, including up to $350 million from the regional wholesaler Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the Water Authority is brokering its own deal with Poseidon to purchase the water directly.

“Those (local) agencies wanted to purchase the desalinated water at a price that was never more than buying water from the Water Authority, and that’s not possible. That was not financially viable,” said Ken Weinberg, director of water resources for the San Diego County Water Authority. “Discussions we’re having now is about paying the actual cost of production and distribution of that water.” 

The maximum price would be set at $1,600 per acre-foot in today’s dollars compared to around $800 for imported water currently. Exactly how much desalinated water the Water Authority will agree to buy from Poseidon – to then resell to local agencies – is still being negotiated in closed-door meetings. Poseidon spokesman Scott Maloni did not return repeated requests for comment.

Based on the average price of desalinated water around the globe at around $3,000 to $4,000, Poseidon may be still underestimating.

The new deal will certainly be more favorable to Poseidon’s equity investors – which change frequently and have included Warburg Pincus, Citi Sustainable and GE Capital.

The deal will undoubtedly be worse, however, for Southern California ratepayers, who increasingly find themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to what they will pay for life’s most essential resource.

“The Water Authority will have to raise its rates to cover additional costs of desalination,” said Glenn Pruim, utilities director for Carlsbad Regional Water District.  “It’s definitely in the best interest of the investors. This is a really good deal for Poseidon. It’s a good deal for the Water Authority because they are securing a regional source of water and it could be a good deal for Carlsbad. We just hope they are as good at negotiating deals as they are at making water.” 

Eight of the nine local water agencies that had deals with Poseidon – all but Carlsbad – have agreed to rip up their contracts and let the Water Authority proceed. Carlsbad is holding out for an agreement that guarantees a portion of the tax revenues the city would lose if the Water Authority ever exercised its right to buy the plant. Pruim said the two parties will likely reach an accord soon.

“Poseidon’s business plan doesn’t really make sense except that they get bought out by a public agency,” said Conner Everts, director of Desal Response Group, which would prefer more conservation measures before beginning desalination efforts. “We don’t really think they are there to honestly be a company producing water. We think they are there to buy permits and then get bought out.”

The Water Authority along with Poseidon and its investors are betting that the price of imported water will soon exceed the astronomical price of desalinated water. Various experts interviewed for this series believe it could be anywhere from 10 to 20 years. Yet Poseidon reportedly believes it could take less than five years.

“I don’t know how practical that is,” Pruim said. “Part of it is just reality. Poseidon isn’t manipulating the price of water. It is what it is. They are taking advantage of that in a way. The only thing that could go wrong is if Poseidon can’t produce it and they go bankrupt.”

An analysis by the Public Education Center’s DCBureau.org published last year showed that while private equity and bonds would be used for upfront construction, southern Californians would pay at least $640 million over 30 years for the project, including as much as $374 million in public subsidies. Those subsidies are largely still in place as Poseidon looks to forge a new agreement and finally break ground later this year to start producing water by 2015.

In Poseidon’s latest legal victory, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal rejected a claim by San Diego Coastkeeper to conduct additional environmental studies. 

DC Bureau is staffed by award-winning journalists dedicated to bringing you in-depth stories covering the Environment and National Security.

By David Rosenfeld
Courtesy of DC Bureau
Thursday, 03 March 2011

California is in the process of building a series of massive ocean desalination plants on a scale not seen before in the United States. While most are at various stages, slowly slogging through bureaucratic red tape, conservationists are pushing back against powerful interests betting California’s looming water crisis occurs sooner rather than later.

Opponents argue the technology is too expensive and damaging to the environment while the state could do a lot more to conserve water at the tap and in the fields where most of California’s expensive imported water ends up. Skeptics also see in desalination a potential boondoggle where the public bears the risk and Wall Street investors reap the benefits.

“We should be doing a lot more in terms of water saving before we go into desalination,” said California Coastal Commission chairwoman Sara Wan.

“Most likely, given the population we have, we’re going to eventually need to do desalination for water,” Wan said. “There are ways to do it that are less damaging and ways that cause significant impact.”

There are now about 20 full-scale proposals for desalination plants – with several smaller facilities already up and running – from San Francisco to San Diego that would turn the salty waters of the Pacific into drinkable tap water. Some plan to draw brackish water through ground wells, while most want to draw millions of gallons of seawater each day through the same in-take pipes that power plants must phase out in 15 years.

Like the power plants, desalination plants have the potential to entrap sea lions, millions of fish and other marine life. The industry says it is reducing harm with newer technologies such as wedge-wire screens, but much depends on location. Wan voted against a large-scale plant in Carlsbad because it would destroy sea life in a nearby estuary, but she supported a plant in Monterey that plans to draw water through near-shore wells. Neither facility is built yet, though both could break ground this year, marking the first large-scale desalination plants in the state.

There are problems too with desalination’s byproduct, the heavy concentrates of salt and the remains of other chemicals that could be dumped into the ocean.

Desalination also has a massive carbon footprint. For the most common type of ocean desalination method called reverse osmosis, which pushes water through membranes, some 40 percent of the operating cost is electricity to power the plant.

The $700 million proposed plant in Carlsbad by investor-owned Poseidon Resources expects to satisfy around 8 percent of San Diego County’s water supply while at the same time consuming as much electricity as 45,000 homes. Greenhouse gas emissions would total about 200 million pounds a year, according to the project’s environmental impact assessment.

Advocates say the technology is becoming more efficient by re-capturing energy and using renewable resources as much as possible. But it is a lot to overcome.

Drawing water
Most of what the state knows about ocean water in-take pipes comes from the impact of 19 coastal power plants. In 2009, the State Water Resources Control Board ordered those plants to phase-out the use of surface water in-take pipes for cooling their red-hot equipment, the sole reason they are located on the coast in the first place. The state’s governing body on water determined those in-take pipes kill 9 million fish, 57 sea lions and other marine life each year.

Sen. Lou Correa joins Poseidon CEO Scott Maloni to support desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Photo Arturo Tolenttino for SCV.

But those orders do not apply to desalination plants, which expect to use many of those same pipes, often at equal capacity, long after power plants are barred from doing so.

“The effects are the same if you’re drawing in seawater for desalination or power plants,” said Tom Luster, an analyst with the California Coastal Commission. “You’re killing essentially 100 percent of marine life, larva and fish eggs.”

Poseidon’s Carlsbad plant and another the company plans to build in Huntington Beach call for using the same surface water in-take pipes used by the local power plants there now.

“That just exacerbates the problem in our mind,” said Joe Geever, a spokesman for Surfrider Foundation, which along with other conservation groups has filed appeals and lawsuits against both facilities. “If you’re going to protect marine life, you have to protect it from all of these industrial in-takes.”

The Carlsbad plant would draw about 300 million gallons of seawater per day from a nearby lagoon and produce roughly 50 million gallons of drinkable tap water.

An environmental impact assessment performed by biologists determined the screens would destroy enough marine life equal to 66 acres of ocean productivity. To compensate for the impacts, Poseidon agreed to restore 66 acres of wetlands in the San Diego bay area and spend more than $60 million on carbon offsets.
 
Ironically, the state order against ocean-cooled power plants will diminish their capacity, industry experts predict, just as desalination is coming on the scene, which requires huge amounts of electricity.

The water sector already accounts for 20 percent of the state’s energy use, and desalination will only make it greater.

Despite the drawbacks, desalination has gained widespread support among California lawmakers and elected water officials who have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies.

Most of the projects would not be possible without tax-exempt bonds and direct subsidies beginning with California’s $3.4 billion Proposition 50 passed in 2002. It provided $50 million to support 48 desalination projects including research and development, pilot projects and feasibility studies from 2004 to 2006. The years following brought increased support as private companies stepped in to build some of the largest public infrastructure projects in the state’s history.

“Desalination is not the solution. But for some agencies it’s part of the solution,” said Paul Shoenberger, general manager of Mesa Consolidated Water in Costa Mesa.  Shoenberger also heads CalDesal, a newly formed pro-desal lobbying group made up of public water agencies and private water companies.

“With water being so critical these days, we shouldn’t be taking any options off the table, and I don’t think we should be pursing only one option,” he said.

According to backers, California faces a looming water crisis that could make the sky-high price of desalinated water today seem like a bargain in as little as 10 years. In fact, dozens of companies, many in the San Diego area, have millions of dollars riding on it.

“They are not just hoping,” said Glenn Pruim, utilities director for Carlsbad Regional Water District, about Poseidon. “They have it locked up in agreements.”

Two-thirds of Southern California tap water and most of the water irrigating California’s rich farmland arrives courtesy of an aqueduct system hundreds of miles long from the Colorado River to the east and the San Joaquin basin in the north. But those reserves are running low, and they threaten endangered species, which could potentially dramatically increase consumer water prices.

California’s population, meanwhile, could reach 60 million by 2050 from around 37 million in 2009, according to the state’s Department of Finance.

“You can ask anyone in the water industry,” said Noelle Collins, spokeswoman for the West Basin Municipal Water District, which supplies water to parts of Los Angeles County. “Everyone has said you can’t conserve your way out of this crisis.”

But analysts at the Pacific Institute, based in Oakland, say California farms and households could do a lot more to conserve water.

In parts of Southern California, up to 70 percent of all household water is used outdoors, mostly to water lawns, and an estimated 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater drains into the ocean each year.

In California, per capita water use still hovered around 176 gallons per day in 2005, according to the latest estimates by the State Water Resources Control Board.

By contrast, in Australia where ocean desalination plants are up and running in nearly every major city along the coast, consumers reduced their water use to about 40 gallons per day before turning to the costly alternative.

A 2003 report by the Pacific Institute found California could save up to 30 percent of its residential water measured in 2000 mostly by imposing national plumbing code standards established in 1992. Those standards call for low-flow toilets and showerheads and more efficient clothes washers – far less expensive steps than multi-million dollar desalination plants. Other options such as rain barrels, cisterns and native landscapes also help reduce demand. “These are by no means cutting edge technologies,” said Heather Cooley, a Pacific Institute policy analyst.

Another study in 2009 found that California farmers, who receive 70 percent of the state’s overall water supply, could save up to 16 percent – around 5 million acre-feet per year – by adjusting irrigation techniques.

“That’s water you wouldn’t have to withdraw in the first place,” said Cooley, adding that the changes would be greatest in dry months and would also result in healthier plants and less fertilizers and pesticides. “It does suggest that it’s a very effective mechanism for dealing with drought and, in the long run, helping us address climate change.”

In 2009, California passed a state water plan to conserve 20 percent by 2020. The law provides greater incentives for farmers to conserve water, but experts say it won’t be enough.

“There are certainly a lot of barriers to conservation and efficiency. One of them is the low price of water,” Cooley said.

Unlike consumer prices, agricultural water prices are less affected by shortages. Contracts are often set for years at a time and the costs are even more subsidized than residential systems. The new law will require water agencies to measure how much water farmers are using, but it will not enforce any conservation standards.

Sporadic reports in recent years of California farmers letting their fields lay fallow often has more to do with water being cut off due to drought rather than the price of water becoming too high.

Ocean desalination is one way to relieve water pressure on California agriculture, said Shoenberger, who heads CalDesal.

“With an increase in population and increase in water needs in California, desalination is a great potential alternative along with the others for getting local water that’s clean, safe and reliable,” Shoenberger said. “A lot of the inland and agriculture areas would love to see urban California reducing their reliance on the Delta and the inland streams.”

In many cases, conservation has relieved the pressure to build expensive desalination plants where experts realize they are not needed, but supporters say those efforts are running out of steam.

In greater Los Angeles County, water consumption has dropped 15 percent in the past year, according to the West Basin Municipal Water District. The district imports two-thirds of its water today, which it wants to cut in half by 2020. It  also manages a water recycling facility in El Segundo that turns wastewater into 30 million gallons of fresh water daily.

Much of that conservation and reuse came through programs sponsored by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which manages the flow of imported water.

On January 26, Metropolitan reduced its conservation budget to just $10 million – about 1 percent of its total budget – for the coming fiscal year beginning in July. Last year, the southern California water agency spent about $20 million and the year before roughly $54 million in conservation rebates.

The agency, meanwhile, has pledged nearly bottomless funding to water districts with working desalination plants. A report by the Public Education Center’s DCBureau.org published last year analyzed how these incentive funds amounted to taxpayer subsidies.

Metropolitan has already committed up to $350 million over 25 years to Carlsbad – given the plant produces as planned – and a virtual blank check for additional plants to come. The incentive amounts to $250 per acre-foot of fresh water produced.

“We spent hundreds of millions of dollars on conservation and recycling projects,” said Bob Muir, Metropolitan spokesman. “We conserve and recycle and cleanup groundwater that produces more than a million acre-feet of water per year. That’s more than the water used by cities of Los Angeles, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay area.”

West Basin water officials, like many others along the coast, are looking to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a desalination plant to supplement around 10 percent of the region’s water needs. The district has already spent more than $21 million on two pilot projects over the past 10 years.

At a demonstration plant in Redondo Beach opened in October, visitors can see an underwater video of fish swimming past the in-take pipes and educational displays about making desalination more feasible. Yet, according to West Basin, plans for a full-scale plant are still undecided. Collins said the district wants a plant capable of producing 20 million gallons per day, but a location has not been chosen.

“We want to double our recycling and conservation and add a little bit of ocean desal,” said Collins, adding the district would own the plant while contracting major functions.  

Desalination is not new in California. Any water reuse facility or groundwater remediation likely uses the same technology. And even large-scale plants were considered periodically in decades past.

Several efforts failed to materialize. Others were built but rarely needed. In 1998, Santa Barbara built a desalination plant, which now sits idle because it is too expensive. Recent desalination proposals, too, have been temporary shelved as conservation measures are paying off.

Proposed plants in Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo are being questioned. In Long Beach, where local officials have been considering a desalination plant, conservation steps have brought per capita water consumption down to about 100 gallons per day.

“It’s not making as much sense to them now,” said Conner Everts, director of the Desal Response Group opposed to desalination. “There’s no sense of priorities. They just don’t make sense to run. I’ve been working on water issues for 30 years. I’ve watched our per capita use slowly drop. And we know we aren’t capturing and re-using as much as we should.”

The price of desalinated water varies depending largely on the cost of energy. It can average double or even quadruple the current price counties and cities pay for imported water in California. As desalination gets more efficient and the price of water keeps rising, supporters say those price lines will eventually cross. Wherever they cross, the price will be high.

On the Monterey peninsula where a $400 million desalination plant recently won final approval, residents there could be the first to feel the effects financially. The Public Utilities Commission has approved a plan to allow publicly traded California American Water to potentially quadruple water bills on 40,000 ratepayers in order to pay for the proposed plant. There is disagreement, however, over the exact effect on rates with the PUC arguing much less.
 
California American supplies around 40,000 ratepayers with tap water. Most of that water comes from the Carmel River.

“We’re pretty close to the bone on water conservation,” said Andy Bell of the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, which issues water permits on the Carmel River. Indeed, the region has some of the lowest water use per capita in the state at around 70 gallons per day.

Beginning in 1995, the State Water Resources Control Board ordered the reduction in the amount of water it withdrew from the Carmel River by 70 percent by 2016 because of endangered steelhead. A ballot measure to build a damn was defeated later that year. Since then, efforts have turned to conservation and desalination.

When the desalination plant is completed, likely in several years, the Marina Coast Water District will own the plant while Cal-Am will purchase the water and pass the costs onto ratepayers. The Public Utilities Commission says consumers could pay up to 63 percent more for water, but a division within the PUC charged with representing ratepayers estimates the agreement could lock consumers into paying four times their current amount. The plant should produce around 10 million gallons of drinkable water per day when it is up and running.

Diana Brooks, with the Division of Ratepayer Advocates, said the division opposed the water purchase agreement approved by the PUC last year because it lacked meaningful cost controls.

“In this case you have a private water company contracting with two public agencies to deliver water and they have no ability to absorb any risk,” Brooks said. “If there are any risks or the project doesn’t work right, all the risk passes right back through to the customers.”

The PUC also granted Cal-Am the ability to pass through in its rates the costs of attorney fees up to $4.3 million, including the costs of fighting appeals by the Division of Ratepayer Advocates.

“So we’re representing the customers but the customers had to pay for the company’s attorney costs,” Brooks said.

Catherine Bowie with Cal-Am disagreed with Brooks’ assessment. “There is multiple cost controls in the water purchase agreement,” she said. “The facility is being developed by public agencies, so there will be every effort to go after the lowest costs. We have a number of provisions that deal with the management of the project. There is an independent analysis of financing and value engineering through design and construction. I absolutely think there are guarantees of cost control.”

Bowie said that after six years (an application with the PUC was originally filed in 2004) the area was ready to finalize its plans. “We have been in need of a new water supply here since the 1970s, and we are finally developing a solution to this problem,” Bowie said. 

Photo top right: Arturo Tolenttino, Surf City Voice

DC Bureau is staffed by award-winning journalists dedicated to bringing you in-depth stories covering the Environment and National Security.

By David Rosenfeld
DC Bureau
Tuesday, 08 March 2011 

For the scores of businesses in Southern California already supplying desalination equipment around the globe, California’s impending water crisis spells opportunity.

An estimated 3,000 people work for companies in the San Diego area supplying equipment or logistical support for desalination plants, earning the industry upwards of $350 million in annual revenues.

A key element of their business also supplies facilities that re-use and recycle water using similar technology including the membranes that make up the heart of any ocean desalination plant.

“It’s a big industry,” said Tom Pankratz, who writes about desalination for Global Water Report and consults for various water agencies. “A lot of companies that make stuff for desalination plants also make stuff for power plants and automobile plants. There are a lot of major multi-national corporations that have desalination subsidiaries.”

Some of the biggest companies include General Electric, Dow Chemical, Acciona Aqua, Toray Membrane, Veolia Water Solutions and Hydronautics.

About 20 ocean desalination plants up and down the cost of California – most in the early planning stages – have stirred debate over whether adopting such an expensive technology with large environmental impacts is worth it.

Most of the world’s 2,000 desalination plants are currently located in the Middle East where water is in short supply but energy is cheap. In California, an estimated 40 percent of the cost of desalination is energy to run the plant.

Lobbying by companies that stand to gain financially from desalination has helped earn widespread support from California lawmakers, including strong backing from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In 2007, Schwarzenegger aligned with a group of nearly two-dozen lawmakers – local and statewide – supporting a proposed plant in Carlsbad by investor-owned Poseidon Resources. In a signed letter they urged the California Coastal Commission to approve the Poseidon project “on its first opportunity.”

In November of that year, the commission voted 9-to-3 in favor of the project even though Commission staff said Poseidon failed to provide complete information. 

Since 2000, Poseidon has spent nearly $1 million lobbying the California legislature and other elected officials that oversee the state’s intricate water supply. All told, Poseidon has reportedly spent around $60 million on engineering and attorney fees on its Carlsbad plant before a single spade of dirt has been overturned.

“Poseidon is very well connected,” said Glenn Pruim, Carlsbad public works director. “That’s one thing they’ve done very well is to make contacts in the industry whether it be politically or legally. They’ve been very successful in fighting off lawsuits against their project.”

In 2008, executive director of the California Energy Commission, Melissa Jones, abruptly changed positions on the Carlsbad project. First she wrote to the Coastal Commission that the project contained “several fundamental errors.” Eleven days later, Jones wrote to retract her comments. She said she had met with Poseidon representatives and concluded “the project and the plan for mitigation are laudable.”

Proposed desalination plants must also win approval from city and county governments as well as the Public Utilities Commission in the case of investor-owned utilities. First and foremost, however, desalination must win the nod from water agency officials, which, in large part, they have succeeded in doing.

A group of California water companies and public agencies formed the non-profit CalDesal last year to educate and lobby for desalination. So far the group has collected around $100,000 in membership dues, said Paul Shoenberger, general manager of Mesa Consolidated Water District in Costa Mesa. The group recently hired as executive director Ron Davis, former legislative director of the Association of California Water Agencies.

“Our main purpose is to promote environmentally friendly desalination in California,” Shoenberger said.

The desalination message also reaches water officials through sponsored conferences, such as the annual ACWA meeting. Public records indicate today’s West Basin board members attend annual conferences of the New Water Supply Coalition, which lobbies nationally for desalination, and the American Membrane Technology Association, representing companies integral to desalination plants.

The International Desalination Association plans to hold conferences this year in Dubai, Algiers, China and Antigua. Global Water Intelligence also convenes seminars around the world. At last year’s conference in Paris, event organizers tried to pay the airfare for a San Diego County Water Authority official to accept an award for public utility of the year.

“The legal departments said they couldn’t do it and don’t have a budget to pay themselves,” said Pankratz, who helped organize the conference.

But officials frequently travel overseas to see existing plants. Last year, Pankratz helped West Basin water officials travel to Australia – paid by the district – to see an ocean desalination plant in action.

“If you want to see a desalination plant that’s operating, you have to travel,” Pankratz said. “Whenever anyone is doing a new plant, the most senior engineers usually take a trip to visit some operating plant to see how it’s working.”

City councilmen sometimes go on trips, too, he said. “Most of the time the city pays for it.”

Adding to the obscure nature of California’s intricate network of water rights, water agency board meetings often operate with little oversight, said Conner Everts, director of the Desal Response Group. In 2004, two members of the West Basin Municipal Water District went to prison for accepting bribes.

Everts said the current board and the larger Metropolitan Water District of Southern California could do more to increase transparency. Projects are often approved, he said, “with little or no public scrutiny with subcommittee policy meetings and board meetings in the middle of the working day.”

The results of lobbying at the Public Utilities Commission and the California Coastal Commission are obvious. In August 2009, the Utilities Commission overruled an administrative law judge in a dispute over what California American Water could charge ratepayers for desalinated water.

A day before the ruling, company lawyers met with commission staff.

“It was a compromise,” said Diana Brooks with the Division of Ratepayer Advocates. “But on the last day before they voted on it, the commissioner changed his version of it, and adopted the settlement the way it was written.”

The settlement gave California American Water, a publicly traded company, authority to potentially quadruple water prices for desalinated water produced by a publicly owned plant.

DC Bureau is staffed by award-winning journalists dedicated to bringing you in-depth stories covering the Environment and National Security.

By Jack Eidt and Jerry Collamer
Special to the Voice
Analysis/Commentary
(Originally published March 15, 2011)

The Federal Management Agency’s (FEMA) Western Regional Director told Jerry Collamer point blank, one month ago, after him peppering the guy with San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) post-reactor meltdown scenarios:

“That’s why the call it, Disaster.”

Disaster: the past-present tense of our here and now, when we’re not careful.

Disaster can be avoided, if you just don’t go there. Yet our human nature is to go, to build, to deny the omnipotent laws of nature, then suffer that all too familiar consequence – Disaster.

That’s what Mr. FEMA/Mr. Disaster was getting at.

FEMA and First-Responders don’t prevent Disaster. They mop up after.

But Disaster can be preempted, or avoided entirely just by doing the right thing: utilize good common sense.

It Can’t Happen Here?

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register published the reassuring words of Southern California (SCE_ officials and academic seismologists, claiming quake-meltdown-disaster could never happen here. The plant is designated for a 7.0 temblor and Japan’s 8.9 and the associated tsunami are “highly unlikely.”

Consider, however, a study from 2008 by the California Energy Commission called “an Assessment of California’s Nuclear Power Plants, AB 1632 Report.” It states that the region could experience larger and more frequent earthquakes than had been anticipated when the plant was designed, due to the late discovery of underground “blind thrust” faults. It goes on the recommend further study to characterize the seismic hazard, since less is known about the seismic setting than more fully studied Diablo Canyon in Central California.

The uncertainties are with regard to “continuity, structure and earthquake potential” of the nearby South Coast Offshore Fault Zone, and the faulting that connects to the Los Angeles (Newport-Inglewood Fault) and San Diego (Rose Canyon Fault) regions. There is also the potential for as yet undiscovered blond thrust faults near the plant. A Long-Term Seismic Program is recommended to consider the as yet not-fully-considered.

At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, they also claimed “It won’t happen here.” The latter plant was designed for only a 7.9 quake as the “worst cases scenario.”

As well, a study from the Electric Power Research Institute admits: “The Richter scale alone does not capture the dangers or risks posed by specific quakes.” Multiple, unforeseen disasters, quake, tsunami, floods, loss of both primary and backup power, pose the read dangers to an undertaking as complicated and dangerous as nuclear fission.

The California Energy Commission study also mentioned submarine landslides could generate large local tsunamis; a fact not fully understood when SONGS was built. While some consider the 30-foot-high reinforced concrete “tsunami wall” as invincible, others have questioned its durability. Sadly, the walls protecting the Fukushima Daiichi facilities did not stop the backup generators from being flooded, causing the fail. What have the SCE engineers and academic seismologists not fully considered here, when the Big One hits?

San Onofre Earthquake – What If?

Consider SONGS’ precarious seating arrangement: on sand – over a fault – at water’s edge. Then consider its age.

A SONGS 7.5 Earthquake Scenario:

1)      SONGS sinks into its suddenly liquefied sand base / liquefaction

2)      Tsunami –like ocean occurrence overwhelms SONGS’ crumbling sea wall, swamping the cracking, steaming, radiating, eternally hot hell-hole that was moments before SONGS

3)      Remains to hot to handle for 50,000 years or longer. But who’s counting?

Are we prepared for that?

Or something half that?

Or a third of that?

Or a quarter of that?

It Can Happen

Test Model: Japan – July 16, 2007

Kashiwawazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Facility in Niigata Prefecture on the northwest coast of Japan falls victim to a 6.8 shaker. Built over a fault, in an earthquake prone region, at waters edge. Though damage to the facility was limited and “less than expected,” radioactive iodine did escape from a leaking pipe. Ground motion caused water to slosh in the spent nuclear fuel storage pool and spill into the nuclear plant’s reactor buildings. Contaminated water leaked into the Sea of Japan from damaged conduits. SCE uses both pools and dry cask storage. A loss of cooling even could be precipitated by an earthquake or terrorist event; SCE claims they are safe.

And now the ongoing post-quake-tsunami at Fukushima.

Most asked question post Japanese disaster:

“Why’d you build it there?”

The engineers planned and built SONGS (before super seismic hazard mapping computer models, before they knew there was fault sleeping beneath it) designed to last until 2013. Not 2014 – 15 – 16, or 2020 (as it has recently been approved for).

So who’ya gonna trust? The engineers who created SONGS? Building it to a 2013 end date – or SONGS owner-operated Edison, working to extend SONGS’ shaky, aged existence to 2020 or longer – on sand, over a fault, at waters edge?

Remember Mr. FEMA’s tutorial:

“The why they call it, Distaster.”

Using common sense in the antidote to a SONGS disaster: 2013-end-date, game over.

Jack Eidt and Jerry Collamer, founders of Wild Heritage Planners, based in Southern California, collaborated on this piece which was originally published at WilderUtopia.com.

Analysis/Commentary
By Jerry Collamer
Special to the Voice

Reading this will upset a bunch of folks living near the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (called SONGS), between Orange and San Diego Counties, California. Because as far as I can tell, the truth percolating inside SONGS nuke plant ain’t getting out.

SONGS/Southern California Edison employs 3,000 workers. Not all from the local area. Some permanent. Some ‘contract’ players. Moving from power-plant contract, to power-plant contract. Statewide, nationwide, probably internationally. And, not necessarily to nuke facilities.

Most of what happens at SONGS, in maintenance, upkeep, revitalization, infrastructure improvements, also applies to non-nuke plants. Nukes make up maybe 20 percent of our power generation nationwide. Welders, concrete specialists, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, you name it, are in there servicing SONGS. Trying to keep the cranky ol’gal from hiccupping. Goof-ups at SONGS are labeled “Hiccups.”

Typically, in death-defying pursuits: jet pilots, astronauts, sky diving, mountain climbing, wild animals, sword swallowers, snake charmers, special-ops military, nuke workers – the more dangerous the task, the more understated the definition of fatal human error.

At SONGS, goofs = Hiccups.

Author Tom Wolfe introduced us to deadly understatements with “Screw the Pooch.” A jet pilot inadvertently buys the farm in Wolfe’s epic “The Right Stuff.” No biggie the death thing. It’s the known cost of doing risky business.

In military-think, potential death is basic to the task. Marginalized to be sure.

Avoid at all costs. Keep losses small/militarily insignificant. When worst happens, get back to the drawing board to restrategize. In Iraq, that became “The Surge.” In WWII it meant dropping the “Big One.” Which was actually two Big Ones, ending that war. WWII military minds calculated dropping “the Big One” twice saved lives.

San Onofre Nuclear Generating Plant in San Clemente, California. Photo: Wikipedia Commons

Ghastly calculations, the business of flow-charting war: guesstimating potential, rationalized fatalities. Expendable human life. A sobering reality, as people in high places, think-tanks, military brain-trusts, political leaders, and corporations put pluses and minus on our existence.

When we dropped the two Big Ones, labeled Little Boy/Hiroshima – Aug 6, 1945 and Fat Man/Nagasaki – Aug. 9, 1945 (our nuclear awakening in two acts), no one knew for certain the degree of devastation our two “big ones” would cause, slipping from their bomb bays, diving head first into unholy infamy.

Less learned? Well, no one’s dropped one since. Pray Oh Lord, they never will.

SNF (scary nuke fact): nuclear power plants harbor that same awesome power I variying degrees. It’s why insurance companies won’t insure them. If a severe hiccup burps up, like happened in Chernobyl, Russia, loss of life and property is incalculable. And everlasting.

Loose-nukes: the unholy gift that keeps on giving. Chernobyl today, 25-years after its meltdown, radiates its invisible death knell 24-7. A full time on-site crew, man the cumbling site, monitoring its hellish leak. If a Chernobyl-like fate befell San Onofre, then San Clemente, a deserted city, once 55,000 strong, decays nearby. SNF: nuclear contamination cannot be contained once its terrible genie escapes the bottle.

SNF: one “spent” fuel rod, mere inches in length—past its generating prime, is relieved of duty by entombing it in a steel can concrete coffin many feet thick—will hold its radiant charge for 5,0000 to 50,000 years, depending on which nuke’pert you ask.

SNF: no one really understands the impacts. Like the two-nukes dropped on Japan, no one knew till after, what we’d created. Minutes after Japan’s nuclear incineration, the stunned world became an expert.

Generating nuclear power is mathematical guesswork, based on best-guess scientific assumptions. It’s why nuke-plents are over engineered steel-and-concrete behemoths. To protect surrounding humanit from its minuscule radiating death-rods, should a hiccup jump its perimeter.

Small than mom’s rolling pin. Able to devastate entire counties, or worse, depending on prevailing winds should the bad-beastie escape. And the beast can release in 1,000 different angry variables.

And now, who could imagine Japan, touted as technologically superior worldwide and having learned from experience, would produce the out of control, radiating nuclear meltdown/human screw-up we now watch in stunned silence on TV?

For the indescribably unfortunate Japanese citizen suffering it point blank, with nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide, stuck in yet another manmade radiating grim reality, waiting for the other shoe to fall – is the scariest, soon to be deadliest workplace on earth.

But Japan’s evolving nuclear tragedy in no way excuses SONGS’ trouble nuke-plant fireworks, as SONGS holds down solid last place in US-nukes’ unsatisfactory safety record, or makes a SONGS’ similar conclusion any less frightening. Because all SONGS needs, is the same perfect storm to hit California’s coastline.

Geologists warn, SONGS sits atop the same ticking time bomb ring-of-fire tectonic underpinnings as does Japan. A Pacific Rim necklace (included the Indian Ocean) extending north up the western coastlines of South and North America, east across the Aleutians to Asia, flowing south along Asia’s western perimeter to Australia.

Japan’s weak link in the Pacific Rim’s infamous ring-of-fire necklace mirrors a SONGS potential.

Seismologists agree, the USA’s west coast is overdue for “our” next big-one. Japan is the example. SONGS is our neighboring reality.

There are 104 nuke plants in the USA. Most radiate east of the Mississippi. California has four. Two are operational. SONGS is one of the two, with the worst safety record of all 104, right here in San Clemente.

Did I mention SONGS is old? Primitive by today’s nuke-plant standards. But Edison kept bandaging its 50’s era design, constructed in the 60’s. Original plan: decommission by 2013. Relentless government lobbying as pushed SONGS end-time to 2020 to maximize profitability before mothballing.

But just maybe, Edison wringing every last drop of stockholder dividend from its tired beast, long past her prime, is why morale inside SONGS’ grumbling belly of 3,000 caregivers grows more corrosive by the day. Multiple management changes in as many years have fixed nothing.

A new plant CE) is up to bat. He sonds as good as the last one. And the one before. AN? SNF: a growling gut, causes hiccups. Hiccups of the nuclear kind no one on earth can afford. And especially San Clemente.

SONGS score of 10—10 being worst, begs this question: as SONGS good neighbor, how expendable are we?

Jerry Collamer is co-founder of Wild Heritage Planners, and organization dedicated to sustainable environmental planning in Southern California, and contributes to WilderUtopia.com where this story was originally published.

By Debbie Cook
Special to the Surf City Voice

Debbie Cook is the former mayor of Huntington Beach. As a member of the Huntington Beach City Council, she opposed the Poseidon desalination project proposed for the city. She served on the state’s Desalination Task Force and has written extensively on the relationship between water and energy as well as peak oil. Her articles have appeared in a wide array of publications and she is well known for her expertise on energy related issues. This is the last of three parts.

Worldwide, humans have quickly and wastefully consumed water from the cheapest sources by over-pumping aquifers and over-allocating rivers. We’ve turned to technology to eke out more but technology is not without its costs. Every remaining incremental gallon of water will come at a higher and higher price. Are we nearing a breaking point?

Prior to the 2008 run-up in oil prices, gasoline, like water, was widely believed to be inelastic–that consumption of such an essential commodity would grow despite the price. But as gasoline prices headed toward $4/gallon, discretionary spending shrank and the economy shrank.

The rising costs of essentials like food, shelter, energy, and water have a disproportionate impact on low-income households. Low-income assistance programs for water vary significantly from one jurisdiction or utility to the next. For example, in California, San Jose Water provides a 15 percent discount on the total bill while Valencia Water provides a 50 percent discount off the monthly service charge. Such programs shift the costs onto remaining consumers and businesses many of whom are also facing economic distress. Are these programs sustainable in the face of continuous water rate increases and growing economic challenges?

“A solution isn’t a solution if it isn’t affordable.”

Those were the cautionary words of Cuban energy expert Mario Avila who visited California in September of 2010. Cuba has lived through a number of energy crises. The one with which I was familiar was the oil shock that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union. But Mario explained that it was the lesser known electricity crisis following the 2005 hurricane season that exposed the vulnerability of their water system. Two power plants were destroyed by two storms plunging the island into relentless daily blackouts. Without electricity, water didn’t move, it could not be treated, and it could not be discharged. Castro declared an “energy revolution” and within a six-month window, thousands of “social workers” were deployed to inventory and replace every incandescent light bulb on the island and promote zero-interest loans for efficient appliances. Rather than replace the two large power plants, the nation built smaller, distributed power plants improving the resiliency of their system and restoring power and water.

Resilience should be the goal of water planners but most options that improve resilience–water harvesting, conservation, demand management– receive a tepid reception. One major reason is because water providers are paid to sell water, not conserve it. And there isn’t an ongoing assurance for funding conservation or efficiency. When budgets get tight, the conservation budget is the first to be eliminated as was done last year by Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). Ironically, while eliminating the conservation fund, MWD was approving subsidies for desalination and raising water rates because their conservation message had resulted in lower water consumption. Conservation and low tech options for reducing water demand will never compete against capital projects in the current regulatory framework.

Level the playing field
It isn’t surprising that an industry that can’t even quantify water in a consistent unit of measure (acre-feet, gallons, cubic meters, units, cubic foot), would apply different criteria to different water options. The result is a misleading comparison between options.

Here’s an example. Say a proponent tells you that the new desalination project will produce water at $1000/acre-foot. You’re told that your city is buying water from MWD for $750/acre-foot. The natural reaction will be to compare $750 to $1000. But MWDʼs actual production costs are closer to $200 of that $750 figure. That means $550 is covering their fixed costs. So even if you reduce your imported water by 10 percent, the remaining costs (including your city’s 90 percent remainder) will have to be leveled across all water purchasers. Communities that are not the recipients of the desalinated water will nevertheless be footing the bill through subsidies and cost sharing.

Similarly there has not been a fair method for comparing conservation measures to traditional water sources. For example, the cost effectiveness of rainwater tanks has traditionally been calculated by comparing the cost of installation against the savings on household bills. But this ignores the broader cost savings to the community in deferred water infrastructure, storm water infrastructure and environmental externalities like greenhouse gas emissions. When those are accounted for, rainwater harvesting is superior to desalination.

A model already exists for a regulatory framework that would address such conflicting motivations. In 1982 California became the first state to adopt an electric revenue decoupling mechanism. This gave utilities the incentive to promote conservation and efficiency because their ability to recoup their fixed costs was decoupled from the volume of their sales. In addition to decoupled rates, California has a “loading order” of energy preferences that place priority on the least expensive and most environmentally protective resources. When meeting California’s energy needs, conservation and efficiency are considered before additional generation is added.

A sustainable conservation budget would give priority to cost effective programs like water capture, drip irrigation, water recycling, low-flow devices, and water management programs that reduce demand, costs, and bring true resilience to the water sector.

Left to compete on an uneven field, conservation will remain the bastard step-child to desalination. In 2006, many communities in Australia were offering substantial rebates on water tanks. By 2007, demand was so high that prisoners were put to work building tanks. Buoyed by studies that demonstrated other options would be more cost effective than desalination, twenty-three government leaders pledged $250 million toward their goal of reaching 500,000 households. Then in 2008, with the collapsing economy and in the midst of the desalination boom, the Bligh government dismissed wide scale rollout of water tanks. Some officials sensed a threat of competition to their capital projects, going so far as to suggest the licensing of water tanks so as to enable levying taxes on rainwater collected.

Remove the rose-colored glasses
Technology has its place. But it is not magic and shouldn’t be seen as the solution to all our problems. That which is technologically feasible is not necessarily economically feasible. Desalination cannot be “greened” by utilizing solar or wind energy for its energy requirements. Not only is the scale of such a proposal enormous, it ignores the fact that all renewable energy resources are backstopped by fossil fuels. Moreover, the price of such a proposal would significantly increase the cost of desalination, exacerbating the economic problems of water pricing and availability.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned over the past eight years of observing the desalination/water industry is that we create our own problems. And we are stuck in a perpetual feedback loop applying fixes to yesterday’s solutions. That’s the perfect recipe for rear-ending our future. The remedy is to increase our awareness of unintended consequences and the dynamic relationships between water, the environment, and human settlements. It is a systems thinking approach that starts with a willingness to open our minds and apply critical thinking.