Poseidon is currently awaiting the outcome of its planned desalination facility in Huntington Beach, California. The company has attempted to employ an exemption in new legislation, which requires desalination facilities to use subsurface intakes to collect seawater—unless these intakes prove economically or technically infeasible.[1]
Over the years, the company has vigorously lobbied California state regulators. The Los Angeles Times reports that Poseidon has spent more than $1.6 million on lobbying as well as campaign contributions in attempt to gain approval for constructing two of the United States’s largest desalination facilities.[2]
Investigation of commission filings reveal that Susan McCabe, one of Poseidon’s lobbyists, has “privately discussed the Huntington beach Proposal with many of the state coastal commissioners who will—along with the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board—determine its fate.”[3]
Records from the secretary of state office of California further reveal that since 2000, Poseidon has spent $1.3 million lobbying the State Water Resources Control Board and the state Legislature on matters relating to desalination. The company also helped to finance the state and local candidates and their political action committees, spending an additional $324,000 in this capacity.[4]
Rows of cylinders containing RO filters at Poseidon’s Carlsbad desalination facility Credit: Los Angeles Times
Poseidon’s business in California has been slow to develop—but fast to progress. Between 2006 and 2009, the company contested 13 legal challenges that delayed and threatened the future of the Carlsbad desalination facility.[5] In 2011, a Superior Court Judge ruled against a final legal challenge against the facility.
However, since its opening last year, Carlsbad has produced 10 percent of San Diego’s water supply—a whopping 57,000,000 million cubic metres of water.[6] The plant has helped reduce emergency water-use mandates, and more recently, enabled the county to pass a water supply “stress test.” This has meant that the county has required a smaller supply of imported water, and thereby reduced pressure on the State Water Project as well as the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta.[7]
Whether Poseidon’s financial capital translates into political capital for the Huntington facility remains to be seen.
[1] The environmental community favors subsurface intakes because of their potential to reduce the entrainment and impingement of aquatic life (algae, plankton, fish, crabs, bacteria, etc.) “Overview of Desalination Plant Intake Alternatives: White Paper,” Waterreuse Association Desalination Committee, October 2015, <https://watereuse.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Intake_White_Paper.pdf> accessed December 8, 2016.
[2] Bettina Boxall, “A $1-billion Desalination Plant Might be Coming to Huntington Beach, but it Will Test California’s Environmental Rules,” Los Angeles Times, December 16, 2016, <http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-poseidon-desalination-20161005-snap-story.html> accessed December 16.
[3] Ibid.
[4] California’s governor, Jerry Brown, has received a total of $38,500 for his gubernatorial, attorney general, and ballot-measure campaigns. As Bettina Boxall of the LA Times points out: Brown has the responsibility to appoint all members of the state and regional water boards as well as several coastal commissioners. Other recipients of Poseidon include California State senator Toni Atkins (Democrat, San Diego)—who appointed two coastal commissioners during his tenure as Assembly speaker (2014-2015); and Tem Kevin de Leon (Democrat, Los Angeles), who also appoints commissioners. Ibid.
[5] “California,” Water Desalination Report, Volume 47, Number 24, June 27, 2011, Global Water Intelligence.
[6] Mark Muir, “Desalination Plant Anniversary Bodes Well for California,” Water Deeply, December 14, 2016, <https://www.newsdeeply.com/water/community/2016/12/14/desalination-plant-anniversary-bodes-well-for-california> accessed December 16, 2016.
[7] Ibid.