New Plant in my city...

[senoritafish]

Yesterday the city council of Huntington Beach approved plans for a desalinization plant - http://www.kcrw.org/show/ww (requires real player)

Huntington Beach Approves Nation's Largest Desalination Plant During a drought in the early 1990's, Santa Barbara constructed a desalination plant. It operated for about a month before the City got on the much cheaper state water project, and it hasn't run since. Early this morning, in chambers packed with partisans on both sides, the Huntington Beach City Council voted 4 to 3 to go ahead with a desalination plant of its own, even though the Metropolitan Water District says current supplies are sufficient to meet demand for the next 25 years. The plant could mean 50 million gallons a day for Orange County, but completing won't be easy. At the moment, nobody knows who's going to buy it. Is it drought insurance or an invitation for more urban sprawl? We hear the pros and cons.

I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet (can't listen to streaming things at work, and I forget when I get home), but my friend Carole has been very concerned that the company the city is thinking of using does not have a working plant anywhere in the country. The neighborhood surrounding the designated area is very against it - the usual NIMBY stance, but if it's where I think it is, that place is a Superfund site that is going to require YEARS of cleanup first. Just the summary on the KCRW page is enough to give me pause - "drought insurance or an invitation for more urban sprawl?" I do not want an excuse for any more development here. A few parks here and there do not make up for the habitat being covered by houses and shopping malls.

Comments

[dipster.livejournal.com]

It sounds like they're going to build the plant next to the two electric power stations. So what's the big deal? I suppose the alternative is to just charge people more for water..