All hands on deck! Soaky is going hunting for seal tonight — and only you can stop him!
The terror felt by this seal as he sees a spear-wielding Soaky approaching should rouse us all to immediate action!
Soaky — the impish water drop representing the backers of the Poseidon desalination project in Huntington Beach — has gotten Seal Beach’s City Council to schedule a “surprise attack” snap vote on approving the city’s support for the expensive boondoggle before residents even knew what was coming! The lack of advance notice and advance debate gives us — and should give other city’s councils and citizens — a taste of the tactics that Poseidon will be bringing to Orange County: if you can’t win the argument on the merits, sneak through the vote!
This comes to us from Greg Ridge:
Seal Beach to vote on buying Poseidon desal water
High Alert:
With little advance notice, the Seal Beach City Council will be voting on signing a Letter of Intent to buy Poseidon’s desal water. People need to be informed about the HIGH cost of Poseidon water.
Please attend the SB City Council meeting this Monday, March 25 at 7:00 PM at City Council Chambers, 211 Eighth St, Seal Beach.
Call your Seal Beach friends to attend the council meeting (address below) or to email their City Council to oppose ANY deals with Poseidon.
Our pals at No Deal With Poseidon have put up a couple of important posts since Friday. First, there was this call to arms:
HELP! We need “emergency” walkers for a flyer to Seal Beach residents. Poseidon will present a Letter of Intent to the SB City Council on Monday evening at 7 p.m. 211 8th St. SB. We (No Water Deal With Poseidon” will WALK flyers Sunday, the 24th at 9 a.m. Meet at Starbuck’s/Von’s Pavillion . DO either one or BOTH……Poseidon is at our door! We need to fight back. Do the Walk or attend the meeting. Thanks.
It’s too late for you to canvass — but it’s not too late for you to attend the meeting! And if you need more reason to do so, check this out! Remember how San Diego County had approved its own Poseidon desalination boondoggle in Carlsbad? Well, a report has just come out saying that the alternative — more recycling of water — is much cheaper than previously thought!
Turning wastewater into drinking water could provide a large, reliable source of water for San Diego. But water recycling has been politically controversial because some people think reusing wastewater is distasteful.
Marsi Steirer with the San Diego Public Utilities Department holds a flask of recycled wasterwater that she says is cleaner than what comes out of your tap.
It’s also been seen as expensive: about twice the cost of importing water from outside the region.
But the final report on San Diego’s Water Purification Demonstration Project now claims the future cost of recycled and imported water would be about the same, around $1,000 per acre foot.
The report indicates recycling water does save some money by reducing the need for imported water and by cutting the volume of water the city must handle and treat before it’s pumped out to sea.
So, some of the “facts” you’ve seen presented on why we need desalination to provide our water supply — at the cost of dumping brine into the ocean and shocking the offshore environment — aren’t actually facts at all?
Don’t we need some time to digest this? Does the Seal Beach City Council even know about this? Why are they willing to put the city on the hook for this expensive project using obsolete technology — so quickly and without full public debate?
The answer is … we don’t know the answer! You can go the meeting tonight and ask them yourselves! Tell the City Council to take Poseidon’s claims with a HUGE grain of salt! After all — it’s the taxpayers of Seal Beach (and perhaps much of the rest of Orange County) who will wind up on the hook!
What Poseidon was after, and what they’ll be collecting wherever they can get ’em, is non-binding letters of “interest” or “intent” – they can’t seem to settle on the term. They assure the Council that these don’t really commit the city to taking the water, just ensure that they keep “a seat at the table.” But when they’ve got enough of these letters they’re gonna wave ’em around and say they have probable customers… it’ll help ’em with the permitting authorities….
SO… about a dozen of us swamped the SBCC with great anti-Poseidon info, but the Council was hearing it all at the last moment, it was a little much for them to digest. Only Poseidon themselves, and the shills from OC Tax (who have received $70 grand from Poseidon) actually spoke up on their behalf – but of course they’ve been bending staff’s ear for who knows how many months or years.
The Council and Mayor asked a lot of very good skeptical questions, and don’t really sound like they’ll be wanting the water. But the whole idea that this letter “didn’t commit” them but saved ’em “a place at the table” won over, they rewrote the letter a little more ambivalently and signed it.
Disappointment. We want councils to JUST SAY NO now, stop this shit in its tracks. We obviously need to be more pro-active about this, somehow, instead of just showing up at the last minute when we hear this is being voted on.
Thanks for tracking this issue, Vern. Desalinization is so expensive, energy intensive and it is much less bang for the buck than conservation. To Seal Beach City Council I say – good luck getting it permitted by the Coastal Commission!