RIP Kelly Rowe: a Water Board Director who Stood Out from the Herd.

Kelly Rowe shares his delight over Poseidon’s defeat
with Karl Seckel (L) at the Coastal Commission meeting on May 12 2022.
Photo: SoCal Water Wars

Rowe championed OCWD’s wastewater recycling project but lampooned its ‘foolish’ $1.4 billion Poseidon desalination project.

by John Earl, cross-posted from SoCal Water Wars (previously “Surf City Voice”)

The day of his untimely death on Nov. 22, 2023, Kelly Rowe of the Orange County Water District’s Board of Directors was obtusely mourned by his colleagues in an official press release.

OCWD manages the groundwater basin that holds 66 million acre-feet of water and provides 85 percent of the drinking water (15% comes from imported water) for 2.5 million residents in north Orange County.

To OCWD watchers it’s no surprise that some of his former colleagues omitted from his obituary one of the best parts of his time on the board—helping to stop their pet boondoggle, Poseidon Water’s infamous and now deceased ocean desalination project.

Kelly Rowe (right) smiles as the Coastal Commission vote against Poseidon’s ocean desalination project
goes down. Photo: SoCal Water Wars

Needless to say, managing the public’s water supply is a huge responsibility, placed in the hands of a ten-member board of elected and appointed politicians who are carefully trained to tow the party line.

But Rowe was an independent thinker who represented the ratepayers of OCWD’s District 7, which includes Costa Mesa and surrounding areas, exceptionally well.

He first served on the board from 1998 to 2,000. After a long sabbatical ending in 2018, he defeated two-term incumbent Shawn Dewane by a landslide vote. In 2022 he was re-elected for his final term in office.

Rowe was motivated to seek office again by his strong desire to end the board’s obsession with Poseidon Water’s proposed $1.4 billion ocean desalination project, which he called “one of the largest water and land frauds in California’s history.”

The passage or rejection of the Poseidon project by the California Coastal Commission would help decide if California’s coast would be littered with huge energy-guzzling and unneeded ocean desalination plants that kill marine life, discourage conservation and cost too much.

Rowe thought it was vital to OCWD’s mission to steer its valuable time and resources away from Poseidon toward creating sound water reliability projects.

For that, he was shunned by Poseidon and its coterie on the OCWD board, including Cathy Green, Jordan Brandman, Shawn Dewane, Steven Sheldon and Denis Bilodeau:

“You are not going to speak on my time.”
This is what Poseidon VP Scott Maloni had just said to Kelly (left, leaving) – according to Kelly –
when Kelly attempted to join his pro-Poseidon colleagues to speak about the boondoggle.
(Brown Act violation? Video at SoCal Water Wars)

Qualifications

Rowe was as non-political as a water buffalo can be, but his experience as a geologist and his courage to challenge the herd when it was acting “stupid” (his favorite Poseidon adjective) made him stand out.

He was a licensed professional geologist, certified engineer-geologist, hydrologist and floodplain manager with 40 years of experience in the field, as noted in his OCWD obituary.

He managed the Irvine sub-basin in 1985 and from 1996 to 1998 oversaw major repairs to injection wells that protect the basin from seawater intrusion and contamination.

Board president Cathy Green called his passing “a tremendous loss not only to OCWD but to all of Orange County,” noting that his “wisdom, passion and unwavering commitment to Orange County water issues was unmatched.”

It’s hard to think of a sweeter homage paid by one water buffalo to another, but it’s ironic because Rowe was often a thorn in Green’s side.

Upgrade to paid

From 2013 to 2022 OCWD pitched hard to build Poseidon’s dream project along the shore of southeast Huntington Beach—on an earthquake fault, next to a toxic waste dump, in an area scientists say will be prone to future floods from rising sea-level caused by climate change.

Green was Poseidon’s most enthusiastic and loyal advocate. Rowe was one of its it’s most outspoken opponents among SoCal water buffalos.

Green worked relentlessly with other Poseidon coterie members—by hook or crook—to push Poseidon’s desal dream forward, despite fierce opposition from OCWD ratepayers and environmentalists statewide.

Besides using his bully pulpit to oppose Poseidon, Rowe joined forces with R4RD (Residents for Responsible Desalination), a local citizens group formed in 2005 to stop the project.

Rejected false equivalencies

Rowe rejected Green’s oft made attempts to validate the Poseidon project by comparing it to OCWD’s world-renowned Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS), voted for by Rowe and other directors long before she was on the board.

The GWRS started operating in 2008 and recently completed its final expansion. It turns wastewater into 130,000 acre-feet of drinking water annually—nearly 3x what Poseidon would have produced and at a third of its estimated cost.

Green claims that initially there was public opposition to GWRS as well. Speaking at a regulatory hearing in 2019, Rowe addressed that claim head on.

“I note that we did NOT have any public opposition,” he told the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board. “Although Poseidon proponents say that we did have opposition [to GWRS], I get really angry when I hear that.”

Proposed a different plan

Overpumping the Orange County groundwater basin dissolves the seawater intrusion barrier, leading to contamination of its water supply and limiting its production capacity…

And that’s just the half of it, all we can print here…

READ THE REST AT SO CAL WATER WARS!

About Surf City Voice

John Earl is the editor of SoCal Water Wars (previously Surf City Voice.) Frequent contributor Debbie Cook, a former Huntington Beach Mayor, is board president of the Post Carbon Institute.