San Diego Coastkeeper
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Water Supply
Water Supply Overview
San Diego is facing a water crisis. We currently import nearly 90% of our water from outside the region. Despite a growing awareness of the need to wean ourselves off imported water, this figure has actually gone up over the past five years, from a low of 83.5% in 1999-2000. This water is not 'free'. In fact, 19% of all energy usage in California goes towards transporting water throughout the state, exacerbating global warming concerns.
Moreover, the region is facing a water supply ‘perfect storm’ that threatens the region’s viability. Our main source of water – the Colorado River – is drying up; a recent legal decision to protect an endangered fish in Northern California will result in less water coming to us from our second leading source, the San Joaquin Delta; the San Diego region is in a near-historic drought that has reduced even the little local water we usually rely on; and increasing population in the arid southwest is adding demand for water at the same time our supplies are rapidly diminishing.
While every option to enhance local water supplies has some price, Coastkeeper is advocating for those options that will ensure water security while also benefiting our marine environment.
Desalination Accomplishments
San Diego Coastkeeper has played a critical role in reducing the negative environmental impacts of the proposed Carlsbad Desalination Project (CDP). Our efforts, which include written and oral comment at various administrative agencies, city councils, and legal challenges, have helped dramatically improve the project, though we still believe the CDP is still not an appropriate water supply option for San Diego County and desalination should only be pursued after more environmentally friendly and cost-effective strategies (like conservation and water recycling) are exhausted.
Policy Impacts
Coastkeeper has educated elected officials, administrative board members and the general public on the marine life, climate change and energy, and coastal resource impacts of desalination. Lieutenant Governor Garamendi, chairman of the State Lands Commission at the time of its approval of the CDP, has recently qualified his position of support for the project. His message is consistent with that of Coastkeeper’s water supply hierarchy: conservation and Low Impact Development (LID), water recycling and reuse, environmentally friendly desalination.
Public education on desalination policy is similar to that of education regarding Indirect Potable Reuse: if people are given accurate, credible information, public perception can be swayed. Further, without a voice of measured opposition, the public and media dialogue concerning desalination would have been completely one-sided and lacked critical data.
Environmental Changes to the CDP
At least 37 and up to 55.4 acres of wetland creation or restoration in Southern California have been required as mitigation for the CDP’s negative environmental impacts. Without the involvement of Coastkeeper and its environmental partners, the CDP would likely have been approved at all stages without these mitigation requirements. As a result of Coastkeeper’s efforts, the Regional Water Board has placed am additional restriction on wetland mitigation requiring prioritization of in-basin mitigation sites. Coastkeeper’s push for actual impacts analysis instead of out-of-date and unreliable studies resulted in a requirement for Poseidon to perform impingement impacts monitoring once the plant is operational. The results of this monitoring will be used to adjust mitigation requirements.
Net-carbon Neutrality for Greenhouse Gas Emissions
In front of the State Lands Commission (SCL), Coastkeeper argued for full carbon neutrality—requiring Poseidon to offset all emissions associated with the desalination plant’s energy requirements. The SLC took a compromise position and required net-carbon neutrality, which will result in offsets of about 900,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide over the life of the project. The CDP operations will still result in over 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions over 30 years. Due exclusively to Coastkeeper’s efforts, Poseidon was required to provide additional carbon offsets for vehicle operations associated emissions.
Procedural Implications
Although Coastkeeper still maintains the analysis conducted by the Regional Water Board did not comply with the applicable California law, the Board is now using the correct standard as opposed to both incorrect articulation and application of the statute. This is a step towards eventual compliance.
Further, Coastkeeper has fought to challenge a bad precedent set by the administrative review of the largest desalination plant in the western hemisphere. Without administrative and legal challenges, the piece-meal and post-hoc approval process of the CDP would stand as precedent for future projects. Even if the legal challenges are lost, the willingness of environmental groups to challenge flawed administrative approvals stands as a warning to future project proponents and a support to agency staff. The San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) announced its consideration of a much larger desalination plant located at Camp Pendleton shortly after the CDP received its final administrative approval. The SDCWA has abandoned options that include co-location with once-through-cooled power plants and has publicly stated it will pursue subsea floor intakes, an environmentally superior technology. As media reports continually cite the Carlsbad process as the “test case” for desal in California, Coastkeeper’s involvement was critical.
News Alert
On September 26, Coastkeeper and Surfrider filed a second lawsuit in Superior Court challenging the California State Lands Commission’s August approval of the Carlsbad Desalination Project. The suit seeks to address violations by the agency in failing to prepare a supplemental Environmental Impact Review to address impacts to wetlands and greenhouse gas emissions to augment the EIR prepared in 2006 by the City of Carlsbad. The suit comes after the two environmental groups previously challenged the Regional Water Board’s conditional approval of the project.
On Thursday, September 18, San Diego Coastkeeper and Surfrider Foundation, San Diego Chapter, filed a lawsuit in San Diego Superior Court against the San Diego Regional Water Board. The lawsuit seeks to address violations by the agency in conditionally approving a plan submitted to address marine impacts of the Carlsbad Desalination Project.