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Moulton Niguel Water District Agrees To Pay $4.8 Million In Wastewater Dispute

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Martin Wisckol

The Moulton Niguel Water District has agreed to pay $4.8 million to settle a 3-year dispute with South Orange County Wastewater Authority, which processes a portion of the district’s wastewater, according to a settlement agreement released Monday. Moulton Niguel wanted to terminate funding obligations for a treatment plant run by the wastewater authority, the Coastal Treatment Plant, because the water district has rarely needed the sewage capacity since signing a use-agreement in 1999. Instead, it has been able to rely on other plants and has said its customers shouldn’t have to pay for something they didn’t use.

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OPINION: Legislature Should Support More Water Projects, Not Work To Defeat Them

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Bill Manis

All of us remember California’s recent five-year drought when residents were encouraged to cut back their water use, let their lawns go brown, and use barrels to collect precious rainwater. Now, well-funded, politically-connected interest groups are trying to block a new source of clean drinking water for Southern California. According to a recent report by the State Water Resources Control Board, more than one million Californians don’t have access to safe, reliable drinking water.

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OPINION: California Needs WaterFix More Than Ever

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Brett R Barbre

Water is more critical than ever in California. That’s why we need the Twin Tunnels project, called the California Water Fix and Eco Restore, WaterFix for short. It would bring 9,000 cubic feet per second of water from Northern California to Southern California while solving ecological problems. Building only one tunnel would bring south just one-third the water. Yet Gov. Gavin Newsom in an April 29 executive order summarily called for only “a new single tunnel project.” It’s obvious that the O.J. jury spent more time considering the evidence than the governor when considering Twin Tunnels.

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Poseidon Optimism Grows For Desalination Plant But Several Hurdles Remain

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Martin Wisckol

Poseidon officials, who’ve spent 21 years working toward approval of a controversial desalination plant in Huntington Beach, had a figurative bounce in their step as they emerged from yet another permitting agency meeting Friday. The Regional Water Quality Control Board remains months away from voting on one of the final two permits needed by Poseidon. But the fact the board staff detailed a specific timeline for the board’s permit process — with a final vote penciled in for Oct. 25 — was seen by Poseidon Vice President Scott Maloni interpreted that as a signal that board geologists, engineers and administrators are confident they can work through outstanding issues.

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OPINION: Poseidon Is A Bad Deal For Orange County

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Steve Bone

Why is Poseidon trying to hide the real costs of its water boondoggle? Because it doesn’t make any sense for ratepayers. The privately owned Poseidon water project would depend on a massive public handout of $400 million. On top of that subsidy, Poseidon would charge ratepayers significantly more for its water than any of the alternative water supply projects recently evaluated by the independent Metropolitan Water District of Orange County (MWDOC). Poseidon is a bad deal for ratepayers.

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Poseidon Prevails In Desalination Lawsuit

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Martin Wisckol

A lawsuit seeking a new environmental report for the controversial Poseidon desalination plant proposed for Huntington Beach was rejected by a Sacramento Superior Court judge on Tuesday. Three environmental groups had filed the suit, arguing that the plant’s 2010 Environmental Impact Report needed to be entirely done over because of subsequent changes to the proposal. In its 2017 approval of the project, the State Lands Commission determined that Poseidon needed only to complete a supplemental report addressing the changes to the project, which proponents champion as a drought-proof source of local drinking water.

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Will The Doheny Desalination Plant Stay On Track? It Could Depend On The Election

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Martin Wisckol

Amid California’s list of contentious desalination proposals, the plant slated for Doheny Beach in Dana Point has had remarkably smooth sailing. Key environmentalist groups battling plans in Huntington Beach and El Segundo have largely taken a hands-off approach to the south Orange County project, recognizing Doheny’s innovative environmental technology and dearth of local water options there. Additionally, a draft countywide analysis earlier this month ranked Doheny well above the Huntington Beach plant proposed by the Poseidon company.

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OPINION: California’s Boondoggles Threaten Property Owners And Taxpayers

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Jon Coupal

One would hope that with the profound foolishness associated with California’s infamous High Speed Rail (HSR) project that our elected leadership would have learned a thing or two. But this is California. Because we do things bigger and better than anyone else, it’s apparent that one massive boondoggle isn’t enough — we need two. Let’s recap what we’ll call Boondoggle, Senior. The complete dysfunction of HSR is no longer in dispute. Missed deadlines for the business plans, lack of transparency, massive cost overruns, engineering hurdles that make the project virtually impossible to complete and a lack of funding are tops on the list.

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Tree Rings Tell CSUF Students About Droughts And Fires In The Sierra

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Wendy Fawthorp

Some students plant trees. Some hug them. This summer, eight Cal State Fullerton students sampled trees. Really, the students were listening to what trees had to say about the droughts and fires they had lived through. Specifically, the students extracted cores from trees in the Sierra Nevada – including some in Yosemite that had burned a few years ago – and are now examining the cores back on campus. A new laboratory, the Cal-Dendro Tree Ring Laboratory, has been set up to conduct research on the cores, which are expected to reveal valuable data going back 500 to 1,000 years.

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OPINION: The Bullet Train Has (Almost) Nothing On Brown’s Twin Tunnels

/in , /by /The Orange County Registerby Susan Shelly

If you thought the bullet train was a boondoggle designed to lift money from your wallet while delivering nothing, wait until you hear what’s next. The state of California is building a time machine. That’s how Gov. Jerry Brown and the Department of Water Resources intend to pay part of the cost of the $17 billion twin-tunnel project known as WaterFix. They have to get voters to approve the costly undertaking so property taxes can be raised to pay for it. Here’s the catch: The voters have to approve it in 1960.

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