Aspen Vice President Susan Lee Completes Panelist Role on Huntington Beach Desal Project
During most of 2015, Aspen Vice President Susan Lee served as a member of a six-member Independent Scientific Technical Advisory Panel (ISTAP) that studied seawater intake technology options for the Proposed Poseidon Resources LLC Desalination Facility in Huntington Beach, California. The facility would be adjacent to the AES Huntington Beach Power Station (a gas-fired power plant), and was approved by the City of Huntington Beach in 2006. However, in 2010, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) voted to phase out once-through cooling at coastal power plants in California, and the AES facility had to be re-designed. Poseidon then submitted a new application to the City and the California Coastal Commission. The ISTAP was convened by the Coastal Commission and Poseidon Water.
In May of 2015, during the preparation of the ISTAP study, the SWRCB modified the California Ocean Plan with a desalination amendment that required desalination facilities proposing the use of open seawater intakes to evaluate the feasibility of subsurface seawater intake systems. If subsurface intakes were found to be infeasible, the Ocean Plan amendment would require screens on intake pipes to minimize entrainment of marine life into the desalination facility.
The ISTAP’s Final Report was released on November 9, 2015. It considered public comments on the August Draft Report. The final ISTAP report is entitled “Phase 2 Report: Feasibility of Subsurface Intake Designs for the Proposed Poseidon Water Desalination Facility at Huntington Beach, California.” The report evaluates the engineering, cost, and environmental feasibility of different intake methods for the Huntington Beach desalination facility:
A beach infiltration gallery was studied but found to be infeasible to construct and operate at the Huntington Beach location because of the unstable shoreline that is fed periodically by dredged sands.
A seafloor infiltration gallery (SIG) was found to be feasible to construct, under two different construction scenarios.
The cost of the SIG, with either construction option, was found to be so high that it might be the year 2042 before the Orange County Water District would be willing to pay the cost to purchase the desalinated water.
The purpose of considering intake alternatives to the open-ocean intake was to avoid the environmental impacts of impingement and entrainment of marine life that would result from the proposed system. The ISTAP study did not re-evaluate these impacts, but focused on the consideration of the intake options, as defined by the Coastal Commission and Poseidon.
The environmental and social considerations that Ms. Lee addressed in the report included a definition of the construction and operational activities that would result in impacts, the potential construction impacts of the two SIG options, and a qualitative comparison of the impacts between the two SIG intake options.
To read the full report, click here.