The San Diego County Water Authority gave the nod yesterday to a thirty year water purchase deal that will clear the way for a privately constructed desalination plant to operate in the north county.
Frankly, I don’t see this as a controversial decision. I’ve read the arguments pro and con. I think the desal plant is a good idea. Let me explain why.
I lived on an island in the Caribbean (St. Thomas) for eight years that was dependent on desalinated water. The resort where I worked made its own water. From my point of view it worked pretty well.
Given that I was management at the resort complex, I’ve seen the reverse osmosis process up close–it was a critical part of our operations. The generator that protected the “plant” from frequent power outages was the most well-maintained and scrutinized piece of equipment on the property. And I can attest that the reverse osmosis process isn’t pretty or wonderful for the environment.
The water on St. Thomas was expensive; conservation and recycling were part of life. We had cisterns to collect rainwater. The island’s golf course charged an arm and a leg to for “greens” fees, even though the grass was brown much of the year. Toilet flushing was ruled by the dictum: “If it’s brown, send it down. If it’s yellow let it mellow.”
From what I could tell, after thirty years of trying to build a desalination plant, after clearing all the (good and necessary) environmental hoops in California, the best argument against building a desal facility came down to the claim that the water coming out of Carlsbad would be expensive.
Given that the government entities involved here weren’t interested or able to build a plant on their own, it stands to reason that a private outfit will be making a profit off the deal. Nobody knows how much profit, and that is upsetting to a lot of folks. That’s still no reason not to do this.
There are folks that say there are plenty of other ways we can get water, which may or may not be cheaper. I say great. Let’s do those things, too.
Because if you believe that we’ve got some serious climate change coming down the road, then you have to understand that the “natural” sources of water San Diego draws from are not a safe bet.
There are folks that say the amount of energy consumed by the desal process will actually be contributing to climate change. And they’re probably right. But building or not building a reverse osmosis facility isn’t really going to change the usage of fossil fuel energy.
A better use for our energy at this point would be to go after the subsidies for the dirty fuel industry so that the development of renewable sources of energy becomes competitive. What we currently pay for gas and oil has almost no relationship to what its production or ultimate costs are.
My point here is that cheap water (or cheap gas, for that matter) is no bargain. If we want to be better stewards for our planet, it’s time we started paying the true cost of using up our resources.
And while we’re at it, it’s time that we started paying the true cost of labor. Minimum wage employees at Wally’s World cost taxpayer monies. It’s a subsidy for yet another industry. If we expect people to pay the high costs of unsubsidized natural resources & energy, they’ll have to be paid accordingly.
I know that this post will anger and/or upset many of my associates. I know, I know, that I’m taking the same stand (on the desal plant) that the minions of Manchesterland are promulgating. I want to make it clear—very clear—that most of the other folks that write for the San Diego Free Press don’t share my view.
I’ll admit I’ve given short shift to in terms of all the weighty tomes that have been published about the value or not of desalination. I actually did read a lot on the topic leading up to today. A lot of coffee beans died to keep me awake during that process.
Ultimately I felt that a link-filled essay full of arguments pro and con wouldn’t be worthwhile in this instance. The decision has been made. Thirty years of hearings, litigation and investigations are over.
I’m going with my gut on this one. I say build the desal plant.
As always, the comment section is open for you to weigh in on this topic. Fire away.
Petition Aims to Stop Murdoch Take Over of the LA Times
The Federal Communication Commission is considering, once again, rules that would further relax standards relating to media ownership in specific markets. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski has circulated a media ownership order that loosens the newspaper/TV cross-ownership ban in the top 20 markets and gets rid of the ban on radio/TV cross-ownership and radio/newspaper cross-ownership.
Realizing that media mogul Rupert Murdoch would be an immediate beneficiary of any rule change, as he is reportedly interested in buying the assets of the Tribune Corporation (which includes the LA Times), the folks at FreePress.Net (not affiliated with SDFreePress, but we like what they’re doing) are mounting a petition and public awareness drive to oppose any action of this sort by the FCC.
The Big Picture on Climate Change Comes to San Diego
Don Bauder’s got a piece up over at the SDReader talking about studies relating to the probable impact of higher temperatures and rising ocean levels on San Diego. Cited are studies from Dan Cayan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the San Diego Foundation.
The predictions are pretty grim. From the SD Foundation’s “San Diego’s Changing Climate: A Regional Wake-Up Call”:
“In 2050, if current trends continue, San Diego’s climate will be hotter and drier. Sea level will be 12–18 inches higher. We will face a severe water shortage. Wildfires will be more frequent and intense. Public health will be at risk, especially among our elderly and children. Native plant and animal species will be lost forever. We will not be able to meet our energy needs.”
The article goes on to talk about what local governmental agencies are planning in response to these challenges. The good news is that everybody’s working on a plan. The bad news is that it ain’t enough. What we see is more lip service than hard political choices.
One big game changer in this equation could be the incoming Filner administration. From the Reader article:
Although mayor-elect Bob Filner is more attuned to climate change than recent predecessors, many San Diegans worry that significant changes may not take place until nature mandates them. A group called SanDiego350.org is battling for more aggressive climate-change moves. “[The City’s plan] is not strong enough, does not meet its goals,” says Emily Wier, spokesperson for SanDiego350. “We are nowhere near on track for 2035 and 2050 goals. CMAP takes the low-hanging fruit — increasing bike lanes, encouraging people to carpool, the City purchasing more electric vehicles. But it does nothing to reduce our use of fossil fuels.”
To all of the misty-eyed tributes that are going own about the legacies of the Sanders era in San Diego I would like to add my own prediction: He’ll ultimately be more remembered for what he didn’t do or swept under the carpet.
Chart of the Day:
h/t http://andrewsullivan.
Conspiracy of the day…
Aaah, Republicans. Just when you think things couldn’t get any weirder, along comes another elected official willing to prove that literacy and logic are not a pre-requisite for elected office. Today’s winner, courtesy of Talking Points Memo, is Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), who took to Frank Gaffney’s anti-Muslim radio show to rant about the current administration’s Middle East policies. Money quote:
What was all the rage a year and a half ago? It was the Arab Spring and how wonderful it was! This administration really embraced blowing out Mubarak – yes, do it up by all means – getting rid of Qaddafi, it wasn’t enough to send verbal accolades, this administration sent planes and bombs and support to oust Qaddafi so that al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood could take over Libya.
Hotel Employees Win Big Over HEI Hotels and Resorts
Eighteen present and former employees of the Long Beach Hilton Hotel reached a $130,000 settlement with HEI Hotels and Resorts over denial of meal and rest breaks required by California law.
In hearings before the California Labor Commissioner, workers described facing direct pressure from supervisors to work through meals and to skip rest breaks to keep up with increasingly heavy workloads. Some employees from the hotel’s kitchen, restaurant, room service, banquet services and housekeeping gave testimony, attesting to injuries due to the unremitting nature of their work.
The workers were supported in their efforts by UNITE HERE Local 11 and represented by the UC Irvine School of Law-Immigrant Rights Clinic and Legal Aid Society-Employment Law Center.
Hotel employees in the San Diego area have also staged protests and are filing legal actions regarding their treatment by management at HEI Hotels and Resorts.
On This Day: In 1782 the United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. In 1940 Lucille Ball and Cuban musician Desi Arnaz were married. In 1968 Sly & The Family Stone’s “Everyday People” was released.
Eat Fresh! Today’s Farmers’ Markets: Fallbrook (102 S. Main, at Alvarado) 10 am – 2 pm, Imperial Beach (Seacoast Dr. at Pier Plaza) 2 – 7:30 pm, Kearny Mesa (No. Island Credit Union pkg lot 5898 Copley) 10:30 am – 1:30 pm, La Mesa Village (Corner of Spring St. and University) 2 – 6 pm, Rancho Bernardo (Bernardo Winery parking lot 13330 Paseo del Verano Norte) 9 am – noon, Southeast San Diego(4981 Market St. West of Euclid Ave. Trolley Station) 2 – 6 pm
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Doug Porter
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I’m with you. Just because someone or some entity makes a profit on something doesn’t automatically make it a bad thing. The public sector isn’t always better at providing services to its constituents, just as the private sector is often a severely flawed option to public alternatives. In a similar vein, just because unions serve an important–sometimes vital–function in protecting the rights and dignities of workers doesn’t make the unions right all of the time.
The desal project is an important step in the right direction, and really there was no other option but to go ahead with it. Here in San Diego we are so utterly and completely dependent on outside sources for our potable water supplies, having local control over a local source can and should only be considered a good thing. And who knows? Perhaps discoveries made in the development of this plant will lead to less costly and environmentally damaging methods? That’s how progress is made, after all. Trial and error.
Heck of bet with someone else’s money
I’m starting from near zero, here, and can’t argue on the facts, but… I gotta wonder why little or nothing is being said, responding to your observation, Doug, “that the government entities involved here weren’t interested or able to build a plant on their own.” Why? Why couldn’t San Diego County have put together a desalination plant? Did Don Bauder deal with that question in his piece? I do know that the Feds put together a desalination plant at, I think, Pt. Loma, and then later dismantled it so it could be shipped to Guantanamo Bay to provide drinking water to our toe-nail base there.
It just seems that the ‘public-private’ partnership game has taken a deeper hold on big infrastructure than it used to have back when the Interstates and Boulder Dam were being built. Government seemed then to have done a pretty good job.
Doug – thanks for the perspective from your time in the Caribbean and really enjoyed The Starting Line today. (Both the desal portion and the climate change Reader shout-out.) Cheers.
San Diego is not a tiny dry island in the middle of a saltwater ocean. The comparison is preposterous. Our water consumption per residential household is more than double that in Sydney Australia, a FAR more apt comparison both climatically and in every other imaginable way. Any time you find yourself saying that something is a good thing, no matter the cost, you virtually guarantee that you’ll soon be getting ripped off. Why can’t we have desal but at a known and reasonable price, rather than signing a contract without knowing what our end is. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the desal plant will ever produce ANY water. The nature of a guaranteed profit contract with a price point more than double the cost of available water means that after the plant is finished, in the absence of drought conditions, the CWA will preferentially buy water from the cheaper sources. This will likely mean that the plant will shut down, leaving us to pay profits in exchange for no service other than insurance. There are almost no conceivable circumstances under which we will look back after 30 years and say, “For the total cost we paid and the water we received, this was better than simply using the money to buy water needed in times of drought.”
And with regard to the idea that we should “do those things too”, the CWA does not have unlimited resources. Neither do ratepayers. Our ability to pursue other, better, cheaper paths to water security just dramatically diminished. This isn’t better living through science. This is a scam.
The stats, because it’s fun.
St. Thomas
Pop: 51,634
Area: 31 sqmi
Annual Rainfall: 37 in
San Diego County
Pop: 3,095,31
Area: 4,526 sqmi
Annual Rainfall: 11 in
Sydney, Australia
Pop: 4,627,345
Area: 4,689 sqmi
Annual Rainfall: 47 in
Operating a reverse osmosis system at a resort on a tiny island no more qualifies you to comment intelligently on matters of water supply and security for a county of millions of people than farting under the covers makes you an expert in air quality management, though the latter may give you a decent start on guessing the provenance of half-baked opinions like the one we have here. Thanks, San Diego Free Press, for a completely fact-free commentary. Now we know what exactly one person thinks about desal.
Peep – If you have additional information about desalination plants or an opinion on this specific plant I would like to hear it. Rainfall and population statistics on their own don’t seem to add to the conversation. (Unless perhaps highlighting the dearth of rainfall in San Diego and thus advocating for additional water resources or better use of water?)
We’ve eliminated “peep” from this conversation. We tried emailing this person our “terms of service” because they submitted subsequent comments that crossed the line into unacceptable areas (see terms of service tab at the top). It turned out that, in addition to using a nom de plume (acceptable), they’re using a fake email address (not-acceptable).
Lesson learned. If it sounds like a troll, it probably is.
comment deleted
On desalting – why not? To become dependent on water from private sources denies the expensive lession from our past, especially here in California. The company will be to important to fail forcing us to tolerate bad management and ever increasing prices. Point two – this secures the industrial future for the south bay – at least the industrial look. I’m sure the proposed resort hotel loves the idea. It does nothing for cleaning the water or the bay. The industrial size is needed to generate profits not water. I support desalting sea water. I see it in our future. But not in private hands and not in the last remaining potential salt water marsh. Better visions are available.
‘There are folks that say there are plenty of other ways we can get water, which may or may not be cheaper. I say great. Let’s do those things, too.’,,,,,be nice if SD ratepayers had an unlimited budget, but when you take the $900 million out of the budget for the honor of buying water way over the market rate for the next 30 years seems irresponsible to me.
And the idea of using Poseidon which went BK in Tampa, Florida doesn’t seem very wise either. I say follow the money and the trail reeks
What are the other sources of water for San Diego? We’re totally dependednt on the kindness of strangers for our water supply. The LA area is growing and will want more of the water they send our way at present. Same applies to Arizona. The Colorado River is already overburdened. In terms of water San Diego is already an island.
Other countries like Saudi Arabia are altready advanced in terms of desalination. This is from the Harvard International Review:
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which already produces 24 million cubic meters of water per day from desalination, about half the world’s total, is building the largest solar-powered water desalination plant in the world in the city of Al-Khafji on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The recent initiative in Saudi Arabia to enlarge its water desalination capacity using high-tech green technology is a smart move, multi-dimensionally strategic and future-oriented.”
San Diego better get in the game. Maybe this particular proposal isn’t the best way to do it, but it’s a start.
Start Here: http://www.eawdtechnologies.com
This is a copy of an email I sent to SD Water Authority.
50 million gallons daily=153 AF per day times 360 =55,080 AF/yr
Price per AF $2,042 to $2,290 = average $2,167 per AF
Cost for treated water=$331,500 per day= $9,947,000 monthly
=$119,364,000 annually
This is after a $900 million investment. So, thru the year 2035 say 22 years SD will spend an additional $2,626,000 for water. So the total investment will be $3,526,000,000
But ‘sposin’ SD decided to acquire 800,000 AF of storage thru the Semitropic-Rosamond Water Bank Authority storage facility (JPA). This would meet current 153 AF annual demand for over 14 years.
Capitalization cost say $350 million.
22 Years of management & maintenance @ $6.25/Af = $5 million annually for 22 years = $110 million
SD buys water for an average of $500 per acre foot and we buy 800,000 AF that equals $400 million
Cost to put water in & take water out is $100 per AF each way
$200 times 800,000 = $160 million
Total cost for 22 years =
So, Let’s compare costs:
The total for the Desal operation for 22 years = $3,526,000,000
Total for storage project = $1,020,000,000
Savings:
$3,526,000,000 minus $1,500,000,000 = $2,026,000,000
…and SD continues owning the storage past 2035….
HOW IS THE STORAGE NOT A BETTER DEAL FOR THE RATE PAYERS OF SAN DIEGO?
One more thing, SD already owns 14,000 shares in the JPA
= 56,000 AF of storage
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Savage paulsavage1@yahoo.com
Anyone remember when this was a Simpsons episode?
Guess getting burned by the Spanos’ for a quarter of a billion will look like Pop Warner ball soon enough. Ah, San Diego. Our fear of being minor is what keeps us minor. How long are we destined to continue to be America’s Littlest Big City?
Since we seem to experience regularly, droughts on one side of the country while we have floods on the other, why hasn’t the country long ago developed a national aqueduct/pipeline system, similar to our Federal Highway system built in the 50’s? Hell we could have built it right next to the highways back then for that matter.
Seems so obvious we but we can’t get it started, what’s up with that?
How many millions of gallons of water per day do we flush down our drains, to the treatment plant, then out to the ocean? Start there. Treat and refill our reservoirs with this water instead.
And doesn’t the desal process use enormous amounts of fossil fuel? Who will pay for these costs both in our air quality and our pocketbooks?
As of last year there were 20 desalting projects at some stage of development along the California coast; 4 private for profit ventures, 16 public efforts. Sweetwater and Otay have been desalting water for a number of years – water from wells in south bay. We do recycle water. The purple pipe program. I understand only a quarter of that water is purchased with much of it used to help the sewage flow. City water departments could pursue desalting plants. And they would produce less expensive water and provide direct control. Every drop of surface and sub-surface water in the state of California (and beyond) is spoken for one way or the other. When ocean levels rise about 18 inches the State will lose the Feather River water intakes in the delta due to saltwater intrusion. That’s about one-third of San Diego’s water source. What then? Cancun is built using desalted water, as are many cities in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. It is not new nor experimental. San Diego will come to depend on desalted water. If you think we have issues, check out Atlanta.
the last thing most ” real americans” want is to look into their consumer souls and make necessary and essential changes about the way they do things… and they/we have created a serious system of denial to explain our greed to ourselves, leaving on lights, running water, demanding gas prices to stay the same when everything else goes up…
shame on greedy us…
i agree with desalinization plants as necessary, if impacting, but am very wary of private corporate (even “municipal” corporation) management… and everything in large scale (that also is typical of our excessive american policies) is always more detrimental to the planet…
and easier to get away with wasteful corrupt management….
Mr. Porter: I always think your blog is insightful, thanks for your work!