Sounding Off:

In the short period that I have come to know OC Coastkeeper Executive Director Garry Brown, I have found him to be a passionate and pragmatic advocate for the coastal environment. While we don’t agree on seawater desalination and our Huntington Beach project, his arguments mostly have been factual, and he has handled himself professionally and respectfully. Unfortunately, in his recent opinion piece, “Desalination plant will cost more than GWRS” (Sounding Off, Nov. 29), Brown has resorted to disseminating misinformation about Poseidon and the project.

Brown’s comparison between the cost of seawater desalination and the Ground Water Replenishment System (GWRS) is disingenuous. The H.B. desalination plant is being built to offset Orange County’s demand for more expensive and less reliable imported water, not to replace or compete with GWRS. There is no single, “silver bullet” water supply solution, which is why local water managers who are advocates of GWRS are also supporting seawater desalination. In addition, the cost of producing water at the H.B. plant is $1,100 an acre foot, not the “$2,000 to $3,000” he asserts.

While Brown extols the technology behind the GWRS project, he castigates Poseidon for using “50-year-old technology … in effect trading electricity for water.” Brown fails to disclose that the desalination plant’s treatment process is virtually identical to the GWRS and that every modern, large-scale plant uses the same technology proposed by Poseidon in H.B.

Brown then falls back to attacking Poseidon’s record in Tampa Bay, Fla., suggesting that Poseidon “had to be removed from plant operations and replaced by a public agency.” Brown knows better, or at least he should. In fact, Tampa Bay Water exercised its contractual right and bought Poseidon out one year into project construction. At the time the plant was on time, 30% complete, and on budget. By Tampa Bay Water’s account, the problems occurred after Poseidon left the project. Again, this history is well documented in public records and newspaper reports.