No Halt for Desal Project Adjacent to Water-Cooled Plant

The same day water regulators released a draft state policy revise to phase out heavy water use by coastal power plants, they underscored approval of a desalination project. That project would tap into the intake of the Carlsbad power plant. The State Water Resources Control Board March 23 upheld the permit for Poseidon Resources’ proposed $300 million plant to turn salt water into potable water and capitalize on NRG’s Carlsbad facility. “After spending the better part of the past decade successfully permitting the state’s first large-scale seawater desalination plant, construction of the Carlsbad project has started and the inevitable completion of the plant cannot be derailed by opponents of seawater desalination,” Scott Maloni, Poseidon Resources vice president, stated. “The dismissal of our appeal is somewhat ironic given that the same agency is struggling with the difficulties of retrofitting old ‘once through cooling’ systems for power plants because they unnecessarily kill marine life,” said Joe Geever, Surfrider Foundation California policy coordinator. “It’s just good common sense to answer both these questions before desalination facilities are built and later forced to retrofit at even greater expense.” Surfrider and the San Diego Coastkeeper, who together appealed the permit decision, may take the matter to court. Poseidon plans to turn seawater into up to 50 million gallons of potable water a day for the San Diego area. The facility, slated to be largest desalination facility of its kind in the Western hemisphere, landed a requisite wastewater discharge permit from the regional water board in May 2009. The water board said in its two-page decision that it would “consider issues common to desalination facilities” as part of its Ocean Plan Amendment. That Water Board plans to develop the amendment after it finalizes its policy on wet cooling technology at generating facilities. Last week, the board released its revised tentative once-through cooling plant policy aimed at 19 plants representing 19,000 MW of generating capacity. It would make way for a different compliance framework for the state’s two nuclear plants and allow some aging facilities to stay on line if reliability concerns were raised (Current, March 26, 2010).

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No Halt for Desal Project Adjacent to Water-Cooled Plant

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