Experts say coming weeks will be critical in seeing if we’ll stay drought-free or experience climate-fueled whiplash back to dry conditions. The record-setting rain that’s pummeled Southern California over the past few days, coupled with solid water storage from last year’s wet winter, has Harvey De La Torre, head of the Municipal Water District of Orange County, offering this reassuring prediction:
As it enters its 20th year of planning and preparation, a desalination plant proposed near Doheny State Beach continues to be met with delays and uncertainty.
In mid-2018, officials were predicting that the operation could be turning ocean water into drinking water as soon as 2021. Now, the project will be doing well to simply win all required permits by the end of next year.
Orange County sees past Poseidon’s efforts to buy support for its desalination boondoggle. Why can’t Gov. Newsom? Poseidon Water, a large water development company, has been pushing to build a $1.4-billion water desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Like Poseidon’s underperforming, high-cost plant in Carlsbad, the plant and its inflated water would be paid for by ratepayers.
Facing objections from water districts throughout Orange County, the agency that sells imported water to those districts has backed off — at least temporarily — on two proposals that critics said overstepped its mission and the appropriate bounds of its authority.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
