The San Diego County chapter of the Surfrider Foundation announced a new water quality monitoring lab in Carlsbad Tuesday, as well as three new water quality testing sites along beaches in North County.
A bill passed by the state Legislature and headed to the governor’s desk for his signature will strengthen and expand a marine fish hatchery program in Carlsbad, the only one of its kind on the West Coast.
The new legislation by Assemblywoman Tasha Boerner Horvath will update the program and allow it to breed more of the native California species that have been depleted by commercial and recreational fishing over the years.
When your business is water, your business is essential. Over at the desalination plant in Carlsbad, it’s anything but business as usual.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused companies and organizations around San Diego County to take measures to continue serving the public.
As of Friday, 10 workers are quarantined inside the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plan for the next three weeks, monitoring and adjusting gauges and switches, watching for leaks, and doing whatever is needed to safeguard San Diego County’s only significant local source of drinking water.
“We asked some employees to be locked down at the plant for 21 days to isolate the risk of infection,” said Gilad Cohen, CEO of IDE Americas, the global company that operates the Carlsbad plant and others around the world.
The request for volunteers was a precaution against the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The “mission critical” employees will work 12-hour shifts, sleep in rented recreational vehicles in the parking lot, and be resupplied with fresh food left for them at the plant’s gate. They will be furnished with washers and dryers to do their own laundry, and the desalination plant’s kitchen and cafeteria are available to them.
The San Diego County Water Authority purchases up to 56,000 acre-feet of water from the Carlsbad plant per year – enough to serve approximately 400,000 people annually.
The plant is a major component of the Water Authority’s multi-decade strategy to diversify the county’s water supply portfolio and minimize vulnerability to drought or other water supply emergencies.
“While the on-site team shelters in place, a second team is remaining in isolation at home and fully prepared to take over plant operations should any situation arise that would necessitate a change in staffing or if the COVID-19 threat extends beyond 21 days,” according to a statement from Poseidon Water.
“Poseidon Water is working in close coordination with the San Diego County Water Authority, IDE Americas Inc. and the California State Water Resources Control Board Division of Drinking Water and will continue to evaluate the situation and take any necessary steps to ensure uninterrupted production and delivery of safe drinking water from the Carlsbad Desalination Plant.”
The power company NRG will need a few extra months to demolish the old Encina Power Station on Carlsbad Boulevard, but the work will start on schedule and there’s no chance of preserving the plant’s signature seaside smokestack, officials said.
The Carlsbad City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an extension of up to nine months to complete the demolition. Under an agreement NRG signed with the city in 2014, work was required to begin this December and be finished in two years.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it awarded $300,000 to Carlsbad-based Seacoast Science Inc. for the company’s efforts to develop environmentally sound technology.
The EPA awarded a total of $2.7 million to nine small businesses in six states, including three in California, as part of its Small Business Innovation Research program. The EPA previously awarded phase one grants of up to $100,000 to small businesses, including San Diego’s 2W iTech LLC, last July. Those recipients were also allowed to apply for the phase two funding announced Monday.
Icon or eyesore? The perception of Carlsbad’s 400-foot-tall coastal smokestack is in the eye of the beholder. The old chimney, a concrete exclamation point in the sky, soon could be gone. Demolition of the Encina power plant is scheduled to begin by the end of this year, after a new, more efficient plant built at the rear of the Carlsbad Boulevard property, north of Cannon Road, replaced it last December.
