New OCWD Director’s Poseidon Alternative

Kelly Rowe of Costa Mesa stunned the Poseidon underworld when he soundly defeated two-term Orange County Water District board-member Shawn Dewane in the 2018 election. Since 2013, Dewane and OCWD directors Cathy Green, Steve Sheldon, and Denis Bilodeau have fought hard for Poseidon Resources to build a $1 billion ocean desalination plant in Huntington Beach and sign a water purchase agreement with OCWD. Rowe will try to end that obsession by refocusing OCWD’s efforts. The remaining members of Poseidon’s coterie still obsess over Poseidon’s proposed desal deal: buy 56,000 AF of desalinated water every year for 30 years, regardless of need, at 3 or more times the price of imported water sold by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET) for groundwater basin refills.