Carlsbad desalination plant gets coastal commission approval
August 6th, 2008 Categories: Real Estate News, San Diego County Community News
SAN DIEGO– After a 10+ hour meeting today held at Oceanside city hall, the California coastal commission gave final approval to the desalination plant that was proposed to be built on the Encinas power plant site.
The plant will produce approximately 50 million gallons of freshwater a day from 100 million gallons of seawater. The plant will actually pump in excess of 300 million, what is is not sent through the reverse osmosis process is used to dilute the brine left over from the 
process.
To offset damage to marine life from the plant operation there will be 55.4 acre habitat restoration site to be built in two phases. One the size of Poseidon’s proposed 37 acres in the first two years and then an additional 18.4 acres added within the next five years.
With regard to a carbon offsets requirement, Poseidon stated that they will use as much solar power as possible. Also, there may be an actual carbon reduction if you take in to account that pumps, theoretically, will no longer be necessary to bring 50 million gallons of water to San Diego daily from northern California.
As usual we had the Sanders v Aguirre thing going on with Mayor Sanders on one side and the city attorney on the other. It just won’t be regional politics with out it.
“We must diversify our region’s water-supply portfolio,” said San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. “We cannot conserve our way out of the water crisis.”
San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre testified in opposition to the project, arguing that it was the wrong approach to solving the region’s water shortage.
“The primary way to gain new water is through reclamation,” he said, referring to the process by which waste water is converted back into drinking water.”– San Diego Union, 8/5/2008
The project now goes to the California State Lands commission which next meets August 22nd in Los Angeles. If approved then, expext construction on the project to start in mid 2009.
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