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 part 2 of three parts.

Everyone has skeletons in their closets, desalination is no exception. Burying them does a disservice to the millions of public dollars that have been invested. Let’s celebrate their weaknesses so that we may never repeat their mistakes. There may be many dozens of such projects, but here are a few that have experienced their share of controversy: Santa Barbara, Key West, Santa Catalina, and Yuma.

• Santa Barbara’s project was mothballed before a single drop of water was introduced into its distribution system.
• Key West built a 130 mile pipeline and implements water rationing when necessary, thus avoiding operation of its plant.
• Catalina Island hasn’t operated its plant in years, relying on price signals with water rates that are perhaps the highest in the nation. Their top water tier is over $10,000/acre-foot. In response to the utility’s rate increase request, the California Public Utilities Commission had this to say about the Catalina facility: “…for Catalina Island in 2005, desalinated water accounted for only 25 percent of total water production, but desalination accounted for approximately 70 percent of total electricity usage.” Despite repeated requests, the operator, Southern California Edison, would not divulge information about the plants operation.
• The 72mg/d Yuma desalter, constructed by the Bureau of Reclamation, was built to comply with a treaty with Mexico. It was completed in 1992, operated at 1/3 capacity for 6 months and then shut down in 1993. Other, less expensive options for treaty compliance made it unnecessary.

In addition to these projects, there are many pilot projects that litter Southern California. I’ve often wondered why every proposed project has to be preceded by a pilot project. There is one in Los Angeles County that has already expended $23 million of public money. It follows one built in Long Beach which follows one built in Carlsbad which follows one… You get the picture. It’s insane.

Go slow, include all stakeholders
Australia began its desalination building boom in 2004 amid a prolonged drought, ultimately committing $10 billion for six projects. Public participation consisted of after-the- fact review of incomplete details. Construction contracts even contain backed out details of critical information. Decisions were made at Cabinet level and one officialʼs rationale for excluding the public was that information would be “incomprehensible” to the them.

Officials further aggravated their problems by approving multiple projects that competed with each other for materials and labor. Perth, completed its first project in 2006 with the lowest projected water costs of $1677/acre-foot. Later projects came in significantly higher. The Productivity Commission, the government’s independent research and advisory body, announced in July an investigation into the financial and environmental impact of Australia’s water sector. A final report is expected in July. The number of customers seeking financial assistance has risen by 20 percent in two years. The auditor-general of Australia has estimated that the $5.7 billion Wonthaggi plant in Victoria will cost $24 billion over the life of its 28-year contract11 and water increases of 20 percent per year for five years have been recommended. The first political backlash occurred in November’s elections where the Labor party took a beating. With rain returning and reservoirs rising to normal, the Queensland/ Gold Coast Tugun plant and Victoria’s Wonghaggi plant are proposed to be placed on standby to ease the burden on ratepayers.

Assess the weak links
Energy makes up the lion’s share of the costs of producing water, whether from the reverse osmosis process or a thermal process. Like the oft reported stories of “new energy” sources, the desalination industry is constantly bragging about new technologies that have reduced the energy demands of their process. I hope they are true, but until the industry can convert those promises into lower costs, they are no better than the hype of biofuels or perpetual motion.

Despite the widespread belief that the Middle East has unlimited energy resources, both water security and energy security are a real threat to their economy and world security. How long will the Middle East, where as much as 90 percent of water is coming from ocean desalination be able to afford the luxury of desalinated water? According to some reports, water rates in Saudi Arabia cover less than half of one percent of the cost of producing desalinated water. Subsidizing water, food, and gasoline is seen as a way of sharing the country’s oil wealth. But the absence of any price signal has led to some of the highest per capita water consumption in the world, and highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Saudi Arabia now ranks 6th in greenhouse gas emissions, half directly attributable to desalination. Authorities are straining under the burden of water and energy demands pushed by burgeoning population growth. Despite allocating $150 billion over the next five years for power and water projects, they have been forced to abandon their goal of becoming self-sufficient in wheat production. With natural gas in short supply, the feedstock to produce electricity will continue to be oil. The irony is that oil revenues make up 90 percent of the Saudi government’s budget so every barrel diverted to water is a barrel that cannot be sold on the market to fill state coffers.

The rising costs of energy are not just impacting the cost of electricity, they impact the entire desalination supply chain: mining of materials, (e.g. 6 million pounds of titanium alone are required for the worldʼs largest desalination plant in Saudi Arabia); manufacturing and shipping of components; construction; continuous supply of chemicals that are derived from fossil fuels; maintaining equipment; and any necessary treatment for the discharged brine and chemicals. We have long assumed that water was the limiting resource for societies, but water is just the end product of a very long supply chain, with any link capable of affecting reliability.

To be continued.

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Surf City Voice

Southern California (SoCal) imports about half of its water from northern California and the Colorado River. 

Question: What’s wrong with that picture? 

Answer: It threatens the ecosystems of both those sources of water and contributes to global climate change via the enormous energy expended in transporting water over long distances. 

What’s more, SoCal manages its rainfall through a storm drain system that directly contributes to ocean pollution while squandering opportunities to put a precious source of water to use. 

No wonder northern Californians are reputed to be less than enamored with their neighbors to the south. 

The heavy downpours which made December 2010 one of the wettest in SoCal history serve as a reminder that, despite being semi-arid, the region’s rainfall is by no means inconsequential and might be put to better use than overwhelming sewer systems and polluting coastal waters. 

SoCal is home to two-thirds of the state’s population yet receives just one-third of the rainfall and has relied on imported water for over a century. The problems this imbalance has created are now well known. 

The ecosystems of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and the Colorado River are both in dire straits from the demands placed on them and management shortfalls. The California State Water Project, which pumps the water some 400 miles and up 2000 feet over the Tehachapi Mountains, is the state’s single largest user of electricity and consequently a significant source of global warming-producing greenhouse gases. The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has calculated that “it takes up to twenty times more energy to supply water to southern California through the State Water Project as it does to supply groundwater locally.” 

Water experts agree no one solution is likely to completely solve the southern region’s water supply problem. With that said, a study recently published jointly by the NRDC and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), “A Clear Blue Future”, outlines practical measures, collectively referred to as low-impact development (LID), which could be applied to homes and businesses by developers and governments to put SoCal on a better footing toward a sustainable water future. 

The main thrust of LID is simple: prevent rainwater from entering storm drains by capturing and repurposing it where it lands while simultaneously replenishing groundwater aquifers.

For homeowners, LID means funneling rain gutter outflow either directly onto local landscaping, via downspouts and hosing, or alternatively into rain barrels or cisterns for future irrigation. It also means grading driveways to prevent runoff onto streets and sidewalks and choosing pervious paving materials (like bricks, tiles or permeable cement) specifically designed to foster seepage into groundwater. Businesses would do the same and could also collect cistern water for toilet flushing and install so-called “living” rooftops to further minimize runoff. 

Developers would do their part by promoting water-retaining landscape designs and permeable paving. 

The internet is fairly awash in information about rainwater collection systems, some do-it-yourself and at low cost. They can be as small as 50 gallons or up to 25,000 gallons for large scale applications and can pay for themselves through savings on water bills. 

The NRDC-UCSB report also calls on municipalities and governments to require LID practices for new developments, redevelopments or retrofits and to offer tax incentives and/or subsidies to homeowners and businesses that adopt LID strategies. 

The beauty of allowing rain to percolate through soil on site is it prevents urban runoff which, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is the greatest non-point source of water pollution. Streets and sidewalks look clean after a rain because all the oil, grime and trash gets washed into storm drains, along with synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, animal waste and bacteria from landscaping, all of which are harmful to aquatic life. Directing rainwater instead onto landscaping allows the soil to naturally filter out pollutants. What’s more, rainwater is easier on plants because it does not contain the chlorine that is added to tap water. 

By raising the levels of groundwater aquifers in the SoCal region, more potable water would be made available locally for extraction and at lower cost in terms of both money and energy. And, together with rainwater collected for irrigation, the demand placed on imperiled, far-away water sources is eased. 

Lest anyone think SoCal does not get enough rain to make harvesting it worthwhile, consider that most cities in the area average between 10 and 17 inches of yearly rainfall spread out over about 33 days, and just one-half inch of rain on a 1000 square foot roof could yield over 300 gallons of water. 

Consider also the NRDC-UCSB study’s estimate that implementation of LID practices in California could, by 2030, save 1,225,500 megawatt hours of electricity each year, enough to power well over 100,000 homes. Similarly, relying less on water from energy-intensive sources like northern California or from desalination (see “Unlocking Solutions”)  could reduce annual atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide by over 500,000 metric tons, an impact equivalent to eliminating nearly 100,000 cars per year. 

The cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach recently implemented pilot rainwater harvesting programs which provided a limited number of property owners with free rain barrels. San Diego undertook a study at selected municipal sites to figure out the best roofing materials and rain barrel collection systems. Today, property owners in Santa Monica can earn rebates on rain barrel or cistern installations. In June 2010, a first-in-the-nation ordinance took effect in Tucson requiring new commercial  constructions to meet 50 percent of their landscape demand using harvested rainwater.

A sobering article in the Los Angeles Times on January 14 reminds us that, despite the record rainfall of late, the Pacific Ocean is nevertheless in the grip of powerful La Niña conditions which generally portend an extra dry winter for SoCal. Whether or not the rest of the season will be as dry as some meteorologists are predicting, the pressure to locate more potable water will be increasing in the future as a result of population expansion. The U.S. Census Bureau is predicting that populations in the region’s already four largest counties – Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Riverside – will by 2050 have swelled by anywhere from 32 to 122 percent. 

Simply harvesting rain could go a long way toward helping all SoCal cities reach the 20 percent per-capita reduction in urban water consumption by year 2020, as mandated in the Water Conservation Act of 2009 enacted by then Governor Schwarzenegger.

Tiered water rates, where water guzzlers pay more for their greater consumption, are becoming commonplace and also foster conservation by pinching consumers in the pocketbook for the wasteful practices ratcheting up their water bill. As example, the Metropolitan Water District of SoCal estimates that up to 70 percent of residential water use is for irrigation which could be scaled way back by replacing lawns with drought-resistant plants. 

Huntington Beach
The city of Huntington Beach (HB) stands out among SoCal communities for not yet implementing tiered water rates, primarily for lack of a billing system that supports it, according to the city’s Water Conservation Coordinator Bill Crisp. HB’s official website talks up the merits of installing rain barrels, and Crisp says the city is seriously kicking around the idea of selling rain barrels for cheap to residents but needs to figure out first where to store them. 

However, HB does already have an ordinance limiting yard irrigation to cooler parts of the day and just once weekly during the rainy season and three times a week in April through October, though the program runs primarily on the honor system. And, the city participates with 12 water agencies in the area in offering rebates of $1 per square foot for turf removal. Applications are available on the city’s website, and although the deadline for submission is January 31, Crisp hopes the program will be extended another year. Rebates for other water-saving upgrades – rotating sprinkler heads and weather-based irrigation controllers – are available as well.

 HB’s website touts that water consumption per household has dropped 20 percent over the last decade, largely through installation of water-saving upgrades like low-flow toilets and faucet aerators. Under the Water Conservation Act, the per capita daily consumption goal for the coastal SoCal area, which includes Huntington Beach, is 149 gallons by 2020. As is true for other seaside communities which view the ocean as their own backyard, HB has already surpassed this goal at its current per capita consumption of 106 gallons per day. 

Nevertheless, Crisp concedes residents could do a lot more to save on irrigation which still accounts for at least half the typical household’s water usage. He encourages people to look into harvesting their own rainwater and to visit the Shipley Nature Center on Goldenwest Street to experience the beauty of native, drought-resistant landscaping as alternative to water-thirsty lawns. 

Conscientious parents teach their children personal responsibility through the idiom “Waste not, want not” and the wisdom of savings accounts and living within one’s means. So too, we southern Californians can take more responsibility for our water consumption through efforts to capture and make good use of the precious allotment nature blesses us with, free of charge. 

Turning off the water while brushing our teeth, no matter how well intended a gesture, is not near enough.

By Debbie Cook
Guest Columnist

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 part 1 of a three-part story.

There is powerful information waiting to be unleashed in water data. If it were set free it would force us to re-think how we use, develop, sell, transfer, and dispose of water. Rather than focusing on the miles per gallon our cars get, we might consider how much water per mile we get from that fuel. Rather than arguing over how much energy is being used to produce water, we would give credit to how much water is required to produce energy. Rather than focusing on whether our food is grown locally, we would consider how much water it took to grow that food in our locality.

For all the lip-service we give to water and its pivotal role, why is there not a U.S. Water Information Administration modeled after the U. S. Energy Information Administration? Established in 1977 as a response to the 1973 oil disruptions, the EIA “collects, analyzes, and disseminates independent and impartial energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment.” With a budget of $111 million per year, the agency produces data and analysis free of influence from the Executive Branch. The water sector screams for such a resource.

My particular interest in water began in 2003 when I served on the California Desalination Task Force, a group appointed by the State Legislature to look into the opportunities and impediments of desalination. Data is at the heart of reaching conclusions on a technology. Where did the data come from that allowed the committee to write its findings and recommendations? Who verified the veracity of the data? Would it stand up to scrutiny? I have spent eight years chasing such questions.

Information is not easy to come by. There are over 52,000 public and private water utilities in the U.S alone operating largely in anonymity. Public utilities offer varying levels of transparency, private utilities virtually none. The desalination industry consists of over 30,000 companies producing membranes, tanks, chemicals, pipes, monitoring, design, construction, mitigation, engineering, drilling, waste management, and consulting services. Many are competitors and hold data close to the vest. Foraging through public information, industry publicity, scientific papers, and news stories produces information that is contradictory and confusing.

There are 19 desalination projects proposed for Californiaʼs coast. With billions of dollars at stake, the public deserves more clarity on financial and environmental impacts. What are the assumptions that underlie our decisions to move forward? What issues are being left unaddressed? What lessons have we missed that could inform better water planning? Water agencies may be satisfied with the industryʼs propaganda, but my research suggests they should pause and re-examine where we have been and where we are going.

Remembering the past
Desalination proponents throw out numbers that cannot be verified or replicated and those numbers are repeated by the media and government officials as if they were fact.

An article published by the Los Angeles Times on December 4, 2010 is an example.

“Although still not cheap, the cost of desalinated water has been cut by more than half since 1998, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.”

I contacted the reporter to find the source of this statement and received no reply. I searched the USGS website and found an out-of-date overview of desalination with an unsourced sentence that looked like it might be the culprit of the reporter’s “fact.”

“As of 1998, the high cost of desalination has kept it from being used more often, as it can cost over $1,000 – $2,200 per acre-foot (1992 cost basis) to desalinate seawater as compared to about $200 per acre-foot for water from normal supply sources. Desalination technology is improving and costs are falling, though, and Tampa Bay, Florida is currently desalinizing water at a cost of only $650 per acre foot.”

Thinking there might be additional data available from the USGS, I contacted them. They were unable to direct me to any reports or studies to verify the veracity of the claim that Tampa Bay is producing water at $650 an acre-foot. Most likely the figure came from the original presentations made to Tampa Bay Water over a decade ago. Price was probably the motivating factor in Tampa Bayʼs decision to construct a project, but as NOAA stated in a 2003 publication, “Time will not only tell the environmental impacts of Tampa Bay’s desalination plant, but it will also determine if it’s really producing the cheapest desalted seawater in the world.” It would be wonderful if time did tell its secrets. Unfortunately for truth seekers, time may tell but no one is listening.

Last March, according to Tampa Bayʼs General Manager, the cost of production was $1140/acre-foot. Itʼs anyoneʼs guess how he came up with that figure. If you calculate the marginal cost of water based on what the plant has actually produced since 2003, then the cost of water is closer to $1826/acre-foot. Either way, the reporter did the public a disservice by perpetuating the myth that desalinated water can be produced at $650 per acre-foot. I could almost hear the gullible politicians jumping on board.

The reporter could have provided a valuable public service had she written about Tampaʼs twelve years of bankruptcies, technical challenges, and cost overruns. A search of news archives produced an interesting collection of stories, likely with similar fact checking issues, but nevertheless, interesting for the overall picture they paint.

• 1998 engineering contract awarded to Stone & Webster
• 2000 Stone and Webster declares bankruptcy
• 2001 Covanta (partnering with Poseidon Resources) hired to construct and operate for 30 years at $7 million/year
• 2003 (March) initial output begins producing 3 million gallons but acceptance test fails
• 2003 (August) plant is shut due to clogged filters
• 2004 Tampa Bay pays $4.4 million for Covanta to go away
• 2004 (September) American Water Services hired to fix plant at cost of $29 million. Completion projected for 2006.
• 2006 (January) Agreement reached between Southwest Florida Water Management District (Swiftmud) (agency funding $85m of project) and Tampa Bay for payments: 25% when plant is running, 50% when it operates at an annual average rate of 12.5 mg/d for 12 consecutive months, 25% when plant produces 25 mg/d for four consecutive months.
• 2006 (November) Tampa Bay Executive Director announces additional delays
• 2007 (August) Tampa Bay announces plant should be running by Halloween
• 2007 (December) Officials complete 14 day acceptance test. American Water contracts to run plant for 15 years.
• 2008 $48 million over its original budget of $110 million, the plant is operating
• 2009 plant producing 16-19 mg/d
• 2010 (February) plant passes final benchmark, receives final payment
• 2010 (April) plant put on “standby” due to Tampa Bayʼs budget constraints
• 2010 (October) Pinellas County (customer of Tampa Bay Water) projects water rate increases of 16% by 2014
• 2010 (December) SWFMD looks into sanctions against Tampa Bay Water for failure to operate facility in accord with agreement.
• 2011 (January) Tampa Bay announces plans to reach 9 mg/d production by end of January.

Reviewing the news accounts of the Tampa Bay experience gave me pause. Having served in public office, I am familiar with the face-saving, “circle the wagons” mentality that takes over an agency when problems start to mount. Unfortunately, it means others are not likely to learn any lessons.

No one contemplated a standby plant at Tampa Bay. Now, faced with real production costs higher than the rate guaranteed to customers ($841/acre-foot versus $1140 or more), Tampa Bay will eventually have to raise rates or renegotiate an agreement that locks them a 17 mg/d production rate.

To be continued.

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Surf City Voice

How much are you willing to pay for access to clean air and drinking water?

What’s a fair price to keep toxic chemicals out of the food supply, to insure the future of ocean and freshwater fish stocks, to keep public parks open, and to stem the melting of the polar ice caps so our coastal cities remain above sea level and polar bears won’t go extinct?

Questions of this sort prompted me to investigate how much the federal government and my home state of California (and ultimately us, the taxpayers) actually spend on environmental protection. Turns out neither comes close to one thin dime on the dollar.

Federal outlay for environmental protection is one percent
Federal environmental spending, like defense spending, comes under discretionary spending which in 2009 amounted to $1.2 trillion or about one-third of the total $3.5 trillion federal outlay. Mandatory spending makes up the remaining two-thirds of the federal budget (nearly $2.3 trillion) and goes to hefty programs like Medicare, Social Security and interest on the national debt.

Discretionary spending is divided into two broad categories, national defense and non-national defense, with defense spending eating up 53 percent of all discretionary dollars in 2009. The government keeps tabs on federal environmental spending in a category called natural resources and environment (NRE) which totaled $35 billion or just 2.8 percent of discretionary spending and a meager one percent of total federal spending.

What this means in dollars and cents spent on behalf of each person in the country is easy to compute using the U.S. Census Bureau estimate that the country’s population in 2009 slightly exceeded 307 million: Per capita federal spending for NRE was just $114.49, dwarfed by the $2,139.24 spent for every man, woman and child on national defense.

That’s just 31 cents per day spent on my (or your) behalf to preserve the environment versus $5.86 spent daily in one’s name for national defense.

Historically, the picture has looked much the same (see graph), although there were modest relative upticks in NRE spending during Bill Clinton’s and especially Jimmy Carter’s presidency where, in 1980, funding for NRE reached an all time high of almost six percent of discretionary dollars.

Remember, Carter is the president who also installed solar panels on the White House, only to see them removed when Ronald Reagan took office. President Obama, by the way, has just pledged to reinstall them by spring 2011.

That relatively more was spent three decades ago than now on NRE seems backwards given that threats to the environment of herculean proportion in today’s headlines – like ocean acidification & fish depletion, deforestation, global warming, environmental contamination from endocrine disrupting chemicals in everyday consumer products, and a Texas-sized cesspool of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean – were on the radar of far fewer scientists back then and had not yet entered the general public’s consciousness.

As example, the name “Cousteau” in 1980 evoked only captivating images of the ocean’s mystery and abundance, courtesy of the pioneering oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, whereas today his grandchildren Philippe, Jr. and Alexandra use the celebrity of the family name to bring attention to the serious degradations to vast bodies of both salt and freshwater wrought by human activities since their grandfather’s time.

The folly of the huge imbalance between discretionary spending on national defense and NRE is brought into focus by the concept of environmental security which has gained political traction in recent years, especially as relates to U.S. dependence on foreign oil. This concept cautions that political instability and turmoil can emerge wherever there is competition for natural resources (e.g. water, land, fossil fuels) or when masses of people are displaced as a result of drought or famine triggered by environmental degradation, as in desertification, deforestation, soil erosion, or declining marine fisheries.

Environmental security acknowledges that each nation’s environmental foundations – its soil, minerals, vegetation, water and climate – ultimately underpin all socioeconomic activities and consequently political stability. The United States is no exception, yet we fund environmental preservation as though it is the concern of some minor special interest group.

Colin Powell warned as early as 1999, “Sustainable development is a compelling moral and humanitarian issue, but it is also a security imperative. Poverty, environmental degradation and despair are destroyers of people, of society, of nations. This unholy trinity can destabilize countries, even entire regions.” One need only reflect on the modern history of the African continent to drive home the point.

California budgets six cents on the dollar for the environment
California is our most populous state and is generally regarded a progressive leader on environmental issues. Perhaps the dearth in federal environmental spending is compensated for at the state level?

California’s expenditures for natural resources and environmental protection accounted for six cents of every dollar in the state’s 2009-10 budget ($7.3 billion out of $119 billion), according to the California Department of Finance. Per capita, this amounted to $190.

Adding it all up, the federal government and the state of California together spent $305 in the last year to keep the environment safe for me. Given what a good pair of walking shoes or membership at a health club can set you back, this doesn’t seem like much.

And with unemployment and the economy driving most political discourse these days, the likelihood seems near zero that the pieces of the federal and state budget pies carved out for the environment will grow any time soon. Case in point: the allocation for the environment in the California budget just enacted for 2010-11 was cut to 5.5 percent, reflecting a spending drop of $415 million compared to the previous year.

I, however, am all for diverting a good chunk of the spending in my name on military defense and foreign wars to funding efforts to stave off very real looming threats to both national security and my own personal well-being from our fossil fuel-based economy, environmental contaminates, water shortages, global climate change and the like.

If only there was a spot on federal and state income tax forms letting us choose how our tax dollars will be spent.

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Surf City Voice

Residents of Huntington Beach can take pride in being the only Orange County city that landed a spot this year on a list of 22 ‘Smarter Cities’ nationwide being recognized by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) for setting good examples for the rest of nation in the areas of green power, energy efficiency and conservation.

The announcement came at the end of July, and Long Beach is the only other city in southern California earning this distinction. The NRDC extended initial consideration to all 655 U.S. municipalities with populations of at least 50,000.

Huntington Beach and other Orange County cities made an initial cut because the county’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, as measured for 2002 by a North American monitoring program called Project Vulcan, averaged 1.8 tons per capita which met the qualifying per capita cut off of less than 2.5 tons. That Huntington Beach alone made the final list reflects both the city’s record in improving the energy efficiency of its facilities and its community outreach efforts to empower residents to save energy and money.

Although the city’s temperate beach climate might make energy efficiency seem, on the surface, an easier task than for cities in locales with more temperature extremes, its partnership with Southern California Edison (SCE), together with the efforts of its one-man show and Energy Project Manager Aaron Klemm, provided much of the necessary driving force needed to meet the qualifying criteria set up by the NRDC.

For starters, because Huntington Beach purchases all its electricity from SCE which, at 16 percent, delivers the nation’s highest mix of electricity from renewables like geothermal, wind and solar, the city easily meets the  greater than 5 percent green power threshold. This is up from a green mix of 10 percent in 2007. Continue Reading

By Sarah (Seve) Mosko
Special to the Surf City Voice

Does the prospect of spending a weekend away from your favorite e-gadgets (cell phone, laptop, iPod or PDA) stir up separation anxiety? Around our house we’ve dubbed this e-angst, and it can kill enthusiasm for an otherwise welcome family camping vacation.

For teens or adults similarly infected with e-angst, a diversity of devices are on the market which let you bring your e-gadgets along with you camping and also trim your carbon footprint because they utilize only sunshine for power.

Solar chargers
An assortment of portable solar-powered chargers is available that adapt to virtually any hand held electronic appliance including digital cameras and GPS units. Most rely on photovoltaic silicon cell technology akin to what is used on rooftop solar panels. Many are small enough to fit in a back pocket or certainly a glove box so can travel with you virtually anywhere. The cost is as little as $15 on up to $150 depending on the capacity. Because rechargeable batteries are incorporated, gadgets can be recharged even after the sun goes down. Small electronics generally charge in 2-4 hours.

Solar backpacks offer another option for charging batteries or small gadgets on the hiking trail – the solar cells are embedded into the backpack material using so-called flexible or thin-layer solar technology. Though not widely available in stores, several are sold on-line, some for under $100.

Solar tents based on the same concept have been employed by the U.S. Military – for charging telecommunication and tactical devices and to relieve troops of the burden of lugging around batteries – and could be developed for civilian applications in the not too distant future.

Laptops need relatively high capacity chargers which ups the cost to somewhere between $150 and $600. The solar array can come as traditional panels which fold up much like a brief case or as a flexible sheet which rolls up like a mat. Another style has the panels set into the outside of a computer carrying case. Unfolded, the panels measure roughly 1-2 feet by 2-3 feet. You can either trickle charge the computer while it’s in use to extend the battery life or allow for the up to 12 hours needed to fully recharge a computer that’s turned off. Because solar computer chargers weigh anywhere from one to six pounds, they’re compatible with car camping.

Automotive solar battery rechargers are another option for charging laptops. A solar array plugged into the cigarette lighter recharges the car battery while the laptop is simultaneously operating or recharging via a direct connection to the car battery.

More solar camping supplies
Solar showers are no doubt the oldest solar camping supply around. The concept is incredibly simple and efficient. When a black plastic water bag absorbs sunlight, the light is converted to heat which is transferred to the water inside. At the end of a dusty day, suspend the bag from a tree and let gravity do the rest. These sell for about $25 at camping supply stores.

Zero carbon-emission hot meals can be prepared on campouts using solar cookers which also operate on sunlight. Because internal temperatures can reach 300°F, solar cookers can be used to prepare anything from baked bread to meat stew, and they are also useful for water pasteurization which requires a temperature of only 150°F.

Here’s how solar cookers work. A black lidded pot is placed inside a box-like chamber that traps sunlight and converts it to heat. Some type of clear plastic or glass encloses the pot to keep the heat trapped inside. Light-reflective surfaces arranged above the chamber concentrate additional sunlight into the cooker.

Solar cookers are in widespread use in less developed parts of the world, including China and India, especially in areas where deforestation is an issue or firewood is in short supply. Hundreds of styles are sold commercially at prices in the range of $50-$100. Or, you can easily find instructions on-line to construct your own for next to nothing with just boxes, black paint and aluminum foil.

Rugged solar camping lanterns or torches allow dining or reading after dark without propane or disposable batteries. Battery-powered light emitting diodes (LED) are recharged by a small attachable solar panel. Each hour of charging provides one or two hours of lamp light. Figure the cost at about $50.  There are also many styles of LED flashlights to choose from with the option of recharging by way of built-in solar panels or a hand crank.

Solar hat fans which clip onto the brim are available too for those with the mettle to sport one. They’re driven by a mini solar panel measuring a few inches square and sell for $10 or so.

Given the rate at which new electronic appliances are emerging, their integration ever deeper into the fabric of everyday life seems inevitable. It would be tragic if opportunities to commune with the nature were missed because of our attachment to such gadgetry.

As the sun is the ultimate source of the energy on which virtually all life depends, it seems fitting that solar technologies can play a role in sustaining both our sense of connectedness to and preservation of the natural world.

By Sarah (Steve) Mosko
Special to the Surf City Voice

There’s no shortage of finger pointing as the now worst oil spill in U.S. history continues its assault on the Gulf Coast’s ecology and economy.

A USA TODAY/Gallop Poll taken in late May, for example, found that 73 percent of Americans feel that British Petroleum (BP) is doing a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ job of handling the crisis, and 60 percent evaluated the federal government’s response in the same unfavorable terms.

Confronted with images of birds swathed in crude oil and prognostications that the Gulf region’s fishing and tourism industries might never recover, the urge to form a posse,

Gulf-oiled pelicans awaiting clean up. Photo courtesy of IBRRC.

so to speak, to rout out those responsible and hold them accountable is all too human.

But are we Americans shocked enough yet by the enormity of this calamity to own up to our personal role in it?  After all, it’s ultimately our nation’s energy-intense lifestyle and attachment to fossil fuels that gives companies like BP and our government the implicit go-ahead to pursue oil at the risk of the very kind of disaster now ensuing.

Unless you’re a physicist or energy wonk of some sort, hearing that the average yearly per-capita energy consumption in the United States in 2008 was 337 million Btu probably tells you little about your energy footprint. Knowing that a Btu is an energy standard equivalent to 252 calories – about what’s contained in a Snickers candy bar – is probably of little help either.

That’s why Professor of Physics Richard Wolfson of Middlebury College has been giving demonstrations for the last decade which impart a real gut-level, hands-on feel for the energy it takes to support the typical American lifestyle.

His demonstration is simple but ingenious. A volunteer is asked to turn a hand crank which, through a geared system, drives an electric generator connected to two 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.

The upshot is that a typical person can turn the crank fast enough to light one 100-watt light bulb, but not two. To add to the muscular feel for the effort required to turn the crank, Wolfson points out that it takes roughly the same energy output as doing deep knee bends at a rate of one per second. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

Surf City’s power generator, owned and operated by AES Southland, and located on the corner of Newland Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway, will be replaced with a brand new and fully modern plant, minus the industrial dinosaur look–including the ugly smoke stacks that leak large steam plumes into the sky—currently a visual blight for miles around juxtaposed with one of the most beautiful coastlines in the state.

That’s good news for the city’s residents and tourists, but even better news for the millions of marine animals that would otherwise be killed by being sucked through the plant’s intake pipes along with seawater used to cool the plant.

AES seawater intake system. From the Poseidon SEIR

The good news comes from a May 4 decision by the State Water Board that was long expected and is intended to stop the massive destruction of marine life by requiring power plants to use the “best technology available for minimizing environmental impact” or reduce water intake in order to create no greater an impact.

The ruling will affect 19 power generators along the California coast.

In effect, that means AES will either have to shut down or find an alternative to the “once-through-cooling” (OTC) process it currently uses to cool it’s Huntington Beach facility as well as generators in Long Beach and Redondo Beach.

The new standard must be met by 2020; the State Water Board could give more time for AES HB and other power plants to comply in phases, but change is coming. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

The pilot desalination plant under construction in Dana Point, just off of Pacific Coast Highway and next to Doheny State Beach, will test environmental data to determine  the design of a larger facility in the future that will create 15 million gallons of drinking water per day from ocean water, meeting 25 percent of the supply needs for five partner cities or water districts that together will form the South Orange Coastal Ocean Desalination Project.

The desalination plant is being created by the Municipal Water District of Orange County (MWDOC) with funding assistance from various other government agencies.

Unlike the two desalination plants proposed by Poseidon Resources Inc. to be built in Huntington Beach and Carlsbad, the Dana Point facility is publicly owned and will not use a water intake system that kills countless marine life organisms and is being phased out by new environmental regulations. That system is used by power generating companies to keep their plants cool, and Poseidon hopes to piggy back on it to supply 100 million gallons of seawater to each of its desalination plants daily in order to create 50 million gallons of drinking water.

Poseidon CEO Scott Maloni and MWDOC manager Karl Seckel at the OC Water Summit. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino for the SCV

Recently created state regulations covering power generating plants would require the “best technology available for minimizing environmental impact,” or a reduction in water intake in order not to exceed the maximum environmental impact allowed. That would for all practical purposes end that “once-through-cooling” process which is currently used by the power generating plants in Huntington Beach and Carlsbad and that Poseidon plans to plug into. The new standard must be met by 2020. Continue Reading

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

After speaking at the OC Water Summit on Friday, Congress person Loretta Sanchez of Anaheim was asked by the Surf City Voice for her views on the desalination plant proposed by Poseidon Resources to be built in Huntington Beach, in the southeast section of town, next to the AES power generating plant, on the corner of Newland Avenue and Pacific Coast Highway.

Photo insert by Arturo Tolenttino for the Surf City Voice