Newsom pushes seawater desalination plant despite opposition
LOS ANGELES — When Gov. Gavin Newsom was photographed dining at an opulent Napa Valley restaurant during a surge in coronavirus cases, many Californians saw it as hypocrisy. For opponents of a planned $1 billion desalination plant along the Orange County coast, however, the optics were menacing.
The unmasked Newsom was celebrating the birthday of a lobbyist for Poseidon Water, which is close to obtaining final government approval for one of the country’s biggest seawater desalination plants.
Poseidon boasts that the facility will provide a local, inexhaustible source of water for Southern California. Critics complain that Newsom and his political appointees are exerting heavy influence to benefit a private company that would produce some of the state’s most expensive supplies.
Emails obtained by the Los Angeles Times and the environmental group California Coastkeeper Alliance through the state Public Records Act indicate that top California Environmental Protection Agency officials have been involved in a water board’s review of the complex proposal. In addition, Newsom took the unusual step of replacing a Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board member who was highly critical of the project.
Though the Huntington Beach facility meets the state goal of diversifying California’s water supply, it would undermine other environmental policies. The plant would require large amounts of electricity; it would sit next to a rising sea; and it would continue the use of huge ocean intakes harmful to microscopic marine life.
“The Governor has spoken many times about the importance of ... ensuring the sustainability of California’s water supplies,” Newsom’s office said in a statement. “Regions across California must continue to innovate on local projects as climate change makes our state’s water supply more unpredictable.”
Two people familiar with the approval process say staff at the water board, which would need to issue a permit for Poseidon’s ocean intake and discharge operations before the company can go to the California Coastal Commission for final approval, have been under intense pressure to advance the proposal.
During three days of online hearings in July and August, board members questioned whether there was a need for the water supplies Poseidon would provide, noting that the company has yet to lock in a firm buyer for the 50 million gallons a day the plant would produce.
The toughest questions came from William Von Blasingame, a retired power company executive whose second term on the board was about to expire.
With the board’s decision still pending, Newsom’s office announced on Oct. 21 that the governor would replace Von Blasingame with Letitia Clark, a Tustin City Council member who received campaign contributions from pro-Poseidon labor groups during her 2020 reelection campaign.
“Once again I think the governor stepped in,” said Karl Seckel, an Orange County water official. “It seemed rather transparent that he didn’t want Von Blasingame involved in that decision.”