Since 1957 a vote of the people has decided who would be the Huntington Beach City Attorney. Since 1978 no incumbent holding that office has lost an election. Gail Hutton, who defeated incumbent city attorney Don Bonfa in the city election that year, easily remained in office until her retirement 24 years later in 2002.

Her replacement, Jennifer McGrath, was elected to the office next with 48.2 percent of the vote in a race against three opponents, but she ran unopposed in her 2006 reelection campaign.

Next November she will have one opponent listed on the ballot, T. Gabe Houston, who officially signed his candidate’s papers at the City Clerk’s office on Aug. 6, the last day to file.

Like other City Attorney challengers, Houston may also end up as election fodder. But his late entry reveals a serious flaw in the Huntington Beach City Charter—despite nine months of work by the City’s Charter Review Commission that recommend reforms—and exposes the hidden attempts (and not so hidden attempts) by various  members of the Huntington Beach City Council to gain political power by manipulating the reform process for better or worse.

Previously, the Voice showed how the council’s backroom political dramas have come to center stage at city council meetings. But recent e-mails obtained by the Voice give a sharper picture of the passion and acrimony flowing through the political veins of the city.

Some of the conflict centers on the office of City Attorney. One side wants the city attorney to be elected by vote of the people; the other side thinks that he or she should be appointed by the council or the City Administrator.

Related to that debate is the larger issue of how best to control the city’s budget when residents face severe cuts in essential services; specifically, how to take care of the city’s infrastructure shortfall and deal with public employee union pension costs that the city is obligated by contract to pay.

Houston’s last minute appearance at City Hall might have gone barely noticed if it had not followed a recent wave of discontent against McGrath stirred up by Chip Hanlon, publisher of Red County, the popular Republican blog, and city councilmember Devin Dwyer, over McGrath’s interpretation of Section 617 of the City Charter.

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Realizing that Coyote was sly and clever, the monster thought of a new plan. It would befriend Coyote by inviting him into its home. But first, Coyote asked if he could enter the monster’s stomach to see his friends. The monster allowed this, but Coyote cut out its heart and set fire to its insides. His friends were freed. From the monster’s body parts Coyote made the indigenous nations and they flourished. —Adapted from on a summary of the Nez Perce tale of Coyote, the Creator, written by Terri J. Andrew. Turquoise Butterfly Press.

By John Earl
Surf City Voice

In March, Huntington Beach residents living on the edges of the Bolsa Chica Wetlands and the Naval Weapons Station packed a study session held by the city council and Chief of Police Kenneth Small, joined by state Fish & Game and Orange County Animal Control officials.

The citizens were snarling mad. Coyotes were invading their neighborhoods and city officials hadn’t done enough to stop them, they said. The citizens made it clear they weren’t going to take it anymore.

The emotionally charged meeting was a skirmish in the proverbial land war that has dominated the history of the American west since its first European explorers and would-be conquerors set foot on its soil centuries ago.

Until recently, there was no doubt about who was winning that war. But now, the coyotes are fighting back and seem to bes winning.

Lisa Comacho, who lives near the weapon station’s wide open fields, sounded desperate and angry as she described to the officials a homeland under siege.

Seven pets and been killed on her street in the past week, she claimed. The coyotes are more aggressive than ever and they no longer fear people. Instead, they growl at them and stalk them when they walk their dogs, she said.

“The other day they ripped into a friend’s rabbit cage….They’re killing dogs and cats,” she complained.

Comacho expressed her ultimate fear, the same fear held by others at the meeting. “All I know is that we bought homes to live comfortably and safely and we can’t let our children out. Babies can’t go in the back yard….What we’re looking at is someday a child getting hurt or killed.”

One young mother said that her cat had been killed by a coyote and that a coyote had torn a dog on her street into three pieces. Sobbing, she pleaded for her daughter’s safety. “Is it going to take my daughter to get attacked in order for you guys to do something?”

Then she issued a threat: “I can tell you—if I lose my daughter or my daughter gets harmed for this, there’s going to be a price to pay.”

A licensed day care provider said that her back yard was “social worker approved,” but that she can’t have children there anymore because of the coyotes—one killed her dog early one morning and a nearby school was put on lockdown when the predator came onto the playground, she claimed.

A roller and additional chicken wire atop a fence at Golden View park in Huntington Beach helps protect the livestock and small animals housed inside. Photo: Surf City Voice

She admitted that people cause the coyote problem by leaving food out for their pets and other small wildlife, such as possums and raccoons, which attracts the coyotes. But “eliminate” the problem coyotes, she advised, and educate the public.

“When I walk to the park with my day care kids, I carry a hockey stick, a baseball bat and an air horn,” she complained, describing the situation as “ridiculous.”

“Basically, I wonder if the city is insured for the risk of personal injury or wrongful death lawsuits. If the city does not take action, it will be a willful disregard of public safety,” she warned.

Some Friends
Despite the dramatic denunciations, Surf City’s Wiley Coyotes did have a few reliable friends on hand.

Julie Bixby, who lives with her husband Mark near the edge of the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, cautioned that getting rid of coyotes could lead to a rabies outbreak, citing Central Park in New York City has one place where that happened.

Quoting from the book “Rewilding the World,” by Caroline Frazier, Bixby gave a more dire warning of her own: “Lose the animals, lose the ecosystems. Lose the ecosystems and the game is over.”

People, not coyotes, are the problem, she said.

“Coyotes would focus on their natural prey if people didn’t leave out tempting treats, like their trash, dog food and their cats,” she noted, adding that because of the presence of coyotes her cat is not allowed out at night.

A naturalist from the Bosla Chica Conservancy pointed out that coyotes are opportunistic predators that will eat anything. “If you put the pizza in your trash can you are ringing the dinner bell and they will come answer it,” she explained.

“You are ultimately responsible for the protection of your children and your pets. If you don’t want the animals in your back yard, don’t invite them in,” she advised.

Jamie Pavlat, representing the Wetlands Wildlife Care Center and Amigos de Bolsa Chica, was succinct: “The reality in 2010,” she said, “is that we have to learn to co-exist with wildlife. That’s just the situation we are in.”

Reconquista
Pavlat may be correct, but looking at history, co-existence is not the way it was supposed to be.

The descendants of the first European invaders of what is today Orange County long ago destroyed much of its natural habitat and pushed aside most of its indigenous occupants, both human and animal.  Where natural enclaves remain, like the Bolsa Chica Wetlands, the invasion continues full force in the form of suburban sprawl.

But instead of dying off to suburban utopia, coyotes were fruitful and multiplied, feeding off the monster that stole their traditional homelands.

Call it the Reconquista, if you will, but studies show that coyote populations are getting stronger, ignoring the usual borders between humans and wildlife and are recapturing  ground throughout the west, especially in Southern California, while capturing new ground in the east, including in urban areas like Chicago.

A 2004 UC Davis study that cites an increase in coyote attacks  (Coyote Attacks: An Increasing Suburban Problem) compiled data from government agencies and other sources going back over 50 years and concluded that education, environmental and behavioral modification (in humans and coyotes)—and sometimes eradication of problem coyotes—are needed to prevent coyote attacks on people.

The study cited 89 documented coyote attacks in California since 1988 on children and adults, or on pets standing close to their owners, with most of the incidents occurring in Southern California. It also noted 77 other cases where “coyotes stalked children, chased individuals, or aggressively threatened adults.” In 35 cases, the study said, there was a likely possibility of serious or fatal injury to small children if they had not been rescued by adults.

City dwelling coyotes present a different kind of health problem as well. Although coyotes help to prevent rabies outbreaks by keeping skunk populations down, the UC Davis study points out that they can also bring rabies, a dog tapeworm that transfers to people, and other diseases to dog populations.

But the study also reveals that coyote populations thrive where affluent suburban neighborhoods touch upon natural landscapes that contain lush vegetation and provide an ample food source and breeding ground for rodents like gophers, moles and voles.

The rodents, in turn, attract coyotes, which are also drawn by a variety of other human provided food sources including pet food and kitchen leftovers in trash cans, as well as various fruits and vegetables found in many home gardens.

A different study in 2001 found that about 24 percent of the diet of tested suburban coyotes came from human activities, but other studies indicate that the percentage of human food could be much less, suggesting the plentiful availability of other food sources for coyotes.

A favorite food item for suburban coyotes is cats, according to the UC Davis study. In two other studies that examined scat remains from coyotes in Claremont and Malibu, up to 13.6 percent of their diet was from cats.

Suburban coyotes also survive on a steady supply of water runoff from lawns watering and outdoor water dishes for pets. People, who deliberately feed coyotes or other wild animals, which is illegal in the state of California, exacerbate the problem by making life in residential areas more coyote friendly.

In the end, coyote populations expand or contract according to their food supplies: more food, more puppies; less food, fewer puppies.

The well supplied refuge that residential neighborhoods provide for coyotes greatly increases their population density, the UC Davis study points out.

A male coyote living in natural setting, for example, lives in a range of between 8-16 square miles with a general density of about 1.5 coyotes maximum per square mile or—sometimes—up to 10 coyotes per square mile in wild areas in the western United States.

But Southern California’s suburban coyotes were found living in areas between one-quarter square mile and one-half square mile range.  And it was reported that 55 coyotes were killed within one-half mile of where a three-year-old girl was killed by a coyote in Glendale in 1981, the only incident on record of a human killed by a coyote in the United States.

“This suggests that suburban environments are extraordinarily rich in resources for coyotes, leading to high densities,” the study concluded.

A 2007 study of urban coyotes (Ecology of Coyotes in Urban Landscapes, Stanley D. Gehrt), i.e., coyotes living in city areas not adjacent to natural landscapes, came to similar conclusions.

Based on information taken from electronic tracking devices placed on 150 coyotes, the ongoing study concluded that there are from 200 – 2,000 coyotes living in urban Chicago, far from natural wildlife habitats and that coyotes living in metropolitan environments live longer than coyotes living strictly in the wild.

Escalating Conflict
The growing coyote populations in residential areas will inevitably conflict with people in a characteristic progression of seven identified steps as they gradually lose their fear of people. Starting with increased coyote sightings at night turning to daylight sightings of coyotes involved in various activities, such as going after pets, approaching child play areas and acting aggressive toward adults.

Coyotes attack people, especially children, because they consider them to be prey, and such attacks are more likely when coyotes are raising their young in the spring and summer months. But coyotes don’t necessarily attack out of hunger. Coyotes are also stimulated by “escape behaviors” and may take chase after people they believe are running from them.

Coyote densities in Huntington Beach haven’t been mentioned, but Chief Small reported that complaints about coyotes in the city have gone from 34 in 2006 and 54 in 2008 up to 80 in 2009. After two incidents of coyotes entering back yards during the day and killing dogs in front of their owners, he hired a private trapper to take out the offending coyote/s, but the effort failed to catch any coyotes.

While emphasizing their empathy for the angry and frightened residents, Fish & Game officials gave an informed presentation on coyote behavior and proposed a plan that seeks a balance between public safety and the need to coexist with wildlife, including coyotes.

The plan will be a team effort with participation from residents and the government agencies present at the study session, as well as the United States Dept. of Agriculture and officials from the Naval Weapons Station, and it will require education and discipline for people and coyotes alike.

That  approach, based on decades of research, was at least cautiously accepted by most of the city council members, but seemed to be lost on member Devin Dwyer, who hastily lapsed into his usual `government can’t do anything right’ monologues.

Dwyer arrived at the meeting late, after all the concerned residents—whose problems were the reason for the meeting in the first place—had told their stories. Obviously agitated, he took a pot shot at Fish & Game officials and offered his own off the cuff solution.

“To me, I just heard a lot of government rhetoric, to tell you the truth, with no answer,” he scolded. “Farmers don’t have problems with coyotes. Farmers don’t have problems with raccoons. I know how they solve their situations. This is a bit ridiculous.”

Councilmember Devin Dwyer: "This is a bit ridiculous." Photo: Surf City Voice

Police are authorized by law to kill coyotes they deem to be a threat to public safety—any coyotes that have to be trapped will be shot on the spot either by police or Fish & Game officials, although their mass execution is not an option for obvious environmental and political reasons.

Past experience indicates the Fish & Game plan can work, but it will require, above all, behavioral changes by people who may not be persuaded by education alone to sufficiently change a lifestyle that that attracted the coyotes into their neighborhoods in the first place.

In a sincere but muddleheaded effort to deal head-on with the human causes, Councilmember Joe Carchio proposed a city ordinance to ban feeding coyotes or other wild animals in the city. Good idea, but there is already a state law covering that and the HB police can enforce it anytime they want, or any time the city council wants.

Still, an ordinance would have the advantage of allowing the city attorney to prosecute violators directly, instead of handing cases over to the district attorney, and could send a message to irresponsible wild animal feeders—who, studies show, are always associated with coyote infiltration problems—that the city is serious about solving the problem.

Forget that, however, because Carchio withdrew his proposal from the city council agenda fearing that it would have no council support after a handful of critics trashed it and him on a local e-mail discussion board. An even smaller group expressed favorable views, but Carchio may have had flashbacks to the angry mobs that appeared at city council meetings 2 ½ years ago when Keith Bohr tried to pass a mandatory spay and neuter ordinance, another idea that if implemented would probably help keep coyotes out of peoples’ yards and away from their children.

“I guess no good deed goes unpunished,” Carchio lamented during the April 5 city council meeting as he withdrew the item from the agenda. “I did make the point that you’re not to feed the animals, especially coyotes in this case, “and we’re not going to kill them either.”

Carchio’s claim that coyotes won’t be killed will probably turn out to be incorrect in short order. But, so far, no more trapping attempts have been made, according to Lt. Russell Reinhart. Nor have police issued any citations to residents for feeding wild animals.

Meanwhile, the battle between Monster and Coyote continues with no end in sight.

Day laborers hold press conference to announce a lawsuit against the city, Feb. 2, 2010.

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the fourth of five parts in video. This segment shows the English version of the press conference held on Feb. 2, 2010 in front of Costa Mesa’s city hall. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the day laborers by the ACLU, MALDEF and ENDLON.

Day laborers prepare to march to city hall to announce their lawsuit on Feb. 2, 2010. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the second of five parts in video,  and the third  part of a three-part interview with Chief of Police Christopher Shawkey.

Protester outside of Costa Mesa city hall, Feb. 2, 2010. Photo: Arturo Tolenttino

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the second of five parts in video,  and the second part of a three-part interview with Chief of Police Christopher Shawkey.

Chilling Effect, first reported in the OC Voice in Oct. 2007.

Day laborers in Costa Mesa are suing the city to repeal its anti-solicitation ordinance because they say it is unconstitutional and violates their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. For years day laborers in the city have alleged that police have harassed them as they looked for work on public sidewalks, falsely telling them that they had no right to be there. The city’s ordinance does not ban looking for work on public sidewalks, but places tight restrictions on solicitations for work, business or charity that even the city acknowledges it would not apply to protesters. Police records and interviews by the OC Voice reveal that besides the questionable constitutionality of the ordinance, the city has enforced the ordinance unequally, applying it almost exclusively to day laborers while ignoring violations by numerous other workers who twirl signs and make other motions on city sidewalks in order to attract customers to local businesses. The OC Voice was the first to break the story of alleged police harassment under the ordinance and the possibility that a lawsuit would be filed by the ACLU on behalf of the day laborers in October, 2007. This is the first of five parts in video, including a three part interview with Chief of Police Christopher Shawkey.

Poseidon Resources Inc.’s website claims that the desalination plant it wants to build in southeast Huntington Beach, at Newland and Beach avenues, will be a “cost-effective solution to provide residents with a safe and reliable water supply by using existing structures—at no cost to taxpayers.”

Elected officials who voted to approve the desalination plant three years ago have consistently echoed Poseidon’s claim: Poseidon would privately own and operate the plant for its own profit and for its investors—a strictly free market affair with no taxpayer investment or risk, they said.

City council representative Don Hansen praised the project’s supposed free market values to a crowded city council chamber before he gave Poseidon his vote along with three other council members, Keith Bohr, Gil Coerper and Cathy Green.

“My belief is that the market is going to drive the majority of these decisions. I truly believe that,” Hansen said.

If the Poseidon desalination plant is not profitable, he added, it “will never see the light of day. And it’s purely born on private investment dollars, the risk that they [Poseidon] are going to take.”

In a candidates’ debate last year, Hansen warned that “We’re going to need the water” and reassured again that “It’s not us building the plant. It’s all private investment.”

If all goes well for Poseidon, its Huntington Beach plant will produce 50 million gallons of drinking water per day by sometime in 2011. It still needs to obtain additional government permits and must work out a franchise agreement with the city first.

Poseidon plans to build an almost identical desalination plant in the city of Carlsbad. That project is further along in the permit process and if financing comes through it could start construction this summer. Poseidon’s CEOs dream of building large desalination plants at other California coastal locations as well.

Hansen’s appeal to the free market instincts of the voters is persuasive in a city where the call for smaller government is almost a religious doctrine. But attributing either Poseidon project to to free-market karma is misleading because the company could benefit from as much as $1 billion in taxpayer supplied subsidies that would make it easier for Poseidon to attract the private sector financing that it also needs but still lacks in order to build and operate the two plants.

Public vs. Private Ownership
Poseidon’s current desalination proposals are part of the push by larger multi-national corporations to privatize publicly owned water systems around the world. In the case of desalination, public-private partnerships that are heavily dependent upon tax dollars are often the preferred route for shifting control of water resources from the public to the private sector.

Privatization is a radical departure from past approaches to managing water in the United States. Public ownership of water systems is based on the Public Trust Doctrine, a centuries old legal concept that sees access to water as a universal human right based on public ownership for the common good.

Sierra Club attorney Mark Massara says that approval of Poseidon’s plans will set a dangerous legal precedent. “In California and the coastal zone Poseidon is the very first (private) residential desalination facility. And that is a marked departure from the entire history under the Coastal Act.”

Federal and state laws, including the California Coastal Act, treat ocean water as a part of the public commons that must be used primarily for non consumptive uses. One purpose “does not necessarily impair its ability to be used for others,” according to a 2004 analysis by the California Coastal Commission’s research staff. In contrast, privatization advocates treat water as a commodity and more of a human need rather than a human right.

Water privatization began in earnest in the early 1990s as part of the neo-liberal economic reform movement and is now backed by international treaties and banking policies. Neo-liberals deplore government regulations on foreign investors and calls for free and open trade between all nations. In practice, according to critics, free trade imposes privatization upon other nations and allows foreign investors like Poseidon to bypass local labor and environmental regulations.

In separate reports, the Coastal Commission staff and the National Association of Attorney Generals raised serious concerns about the effect of international trade treaties on the ability of state and local governments to force multinational corporations to obey their laws.

Those concerns were quickly brushed aside by the Huntington Beach City Council after Poseidon representatives claimed hat the company was not a multinational corporation, so it could not bypass local laws. But Poseidon promotes itself as the “largest private developer/investor of water treatment facilities in Mexico,” where it has operated for over a decade. Its presence in Mexico and the United States makes Poseidon a multinational corporation by definition.

Costly Water
Desalination is still the most expensive choice for providing water anywhere in the United States. Even with the help of public funds, the price of water from the H.B. plant would still be at least twice as high as regular water source rates for the foreseeable future, an increased financial burden to be paid by southern California residents through increased water fees.

Poseidon executives cite technological improvements in the past two decades that have cut desalination costs considerably. In a 2004 article published in a trade journal, Nicolay Voutchkov, Poseidon’s senior vice president of technical services, wrote about “major breakthroughs” in membrane technology that have made desalination affordable. “Membrane productivity—the amount of water that can be produced by one membrane element—has more than doubled in the past 20 years,” he claimed.

Poseidon’s website promises that desalinated water from its Huntington Beach plant will be “competitive with other new sources of high quality drinking water,” and will be “the lowest cost desalinated water on the west coast.”

And Poseidon VP Peter MacLaggan wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece last year that seawater desalination is no longer cost prohibitive “due in large part to technological advances and the escalating scarcity of traditional water sources.”

But it was taxpayer funded research conducted by the public sector, not by the private sector, that created the breakthroughs that Poseidon CEOs note—although desalination is still far from being in the economic mainstream, even according to some of its strongest advocates.

Over $1 billion (in 1999 dollars) in federal research and development funds provided by the Saline Water Act passed by Congress in 1952. That led to the development of efficient reverse osmosis, the process that Poseidon will use to convert seawater into drinking water, and to the cost efficiency gains that enable the desalination industry to exist today.

So says “Desalination and Water Purification Technology Roadmap,” an exhaustive and favorable report on the future role of desalination, published in 2003, by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The report was researched and written by Sandia National Laboratories, a subsidiary of government contractor, Lockheed Martin. Sandia also does research and development about nuclear weapons, national security and economic issues for the U.S. Government.
Desalination to the Rescue?

Sandia advocates privatization of public water systems worldwide based on the theory that government institutions are too short on cash and too inefficiently run to provide adequate water infrastructure and services to the public. Corporate partnerships with government regulatory agencies and the application of free market pricing principles will ensure affordable water for all people and healthy corporate profits too, according to this view.

The report assumes future water shortages nationwide in response to a growing U.S. Population and its increasing demand for water, especially in the southwestern states. It suggests strategies for creating and applying modernized and more cost effective desalination technologies as the solution to those potential shortages.

But abundant supplies of water delivered through public water systems—at little more than basic costs—have limited the need and financial incentive for research and development of desalination technology in the past.

Due to desalination’s high costs for energy use, construction, and maintenance, industry profit margins are in the single digits. Large scale desalination plants are built only in areas of the world where there is little if any other option—mostly in its most arid regions. Only 0.4 percent of water for drinking and industrial use comes from desalination, according the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

Considering the low demand for desalinated water and its higher costs, it’s no surprise that the desalination industry invested only about one percent—about $5-$10 million—of its gross annual revenue on research and development as of 2003, and most of that went toward modifying existing technologies instead of creating the new ones that are needed for desalination to thrive, according to Sandia. That amount may be more than doubled at present, according to NAS, but that would still be far less than other industries spend for research and development.

But America’s industry and its ever increasing human population greedily exploited its abundant and cheap water supplies in order to maintain and profit from their consumption-based lifestyles. Unbridled development, excessive irrigation of agricultural land and huge lawns were greater priorities than conservation and good management.

Today, it’s payback time. California has declared a state of emergency after a prolonged drought. Our public water systems are severely strained; a dire situation that is exacerbated by human induced climate change and expertly exploited by mulitnational water profiteers to convince the public that desalination’s time is now.

A Drop in the Bucket
As “unimpaired” water resources diminish, Sandia claims, “our nation is now forced to turn to using these impaired water sources,” meaning brackish water from the nation’s inlands and seawater for large urban areas like those that exist all along much of the California coast.

Despite Sandia’s idealist view of private sector efficiency, its proposed roadmap calls for the government to lead the way in funding future technological improvements that it says are necessary to make desalination viable.

Without a renewed surge of government funding for research and development, Sandia says, desalination technology will advance slowly, and large scale desalination plants will remain out of financial reach for the private sector until 2030 or beyond—a long delay during a water supply crisis. But with sufficient government support, the report says, the technological breakthroughs could come as soon as ten years.

The Sandia report dismisses some already proven water management strategies, including conservation as alternative solutions. In fact, the report warns that conservation can also decrease water supplies by reducing the recycling of wastewater “with serious environmental consequences.”

But even the World Bank, an international lending institution based on neo-liberal economic policies, warned that desalination should be an absolute last resort “after all appropriate water demand management measures have been implemented and after carefully evaluating alternative options for conventional bulk water supply…,” in a report it issued in 2004.

Whether the private sector will benefit from another federal spending surge for desalination research and development or not remains to be seen, but current funding levels are a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money taxpayers gave in 1952.

Congress passed the Water Desalination Research and Development Act of 1996 but only $6.5 million was actually dispersed. Funded projects were small, including an experimental plant built in Long Beach, California. Funding under the act was held back after 2001 by the Bush administration and funding from congressional earmarks fell from $25 million in 2005 to only $10 million in 2007.

Subsidy Worries
The exact amount that taxpayers will pay toward the two southern California desalination plants is still undecided. But Poseidon is banking on a minimum of $700 million funneled through local water districts, at $350 million per project, to help make the Carlsbad and Huntington Beach projects become economically viable.

There are worries, however, even from desalination advocates about the effects of government subsidies.
Subsidies may give the private sector an incentive to continue holding back on research and development, knowing that the government will do it, the Sandia report cautions.

And the World Bank worries that “Excessive investment in desalination,” through direct or indirect public financing, could create a “drain on the national budget” and “implies a cost risk for the end-users/or taxpayers in a country,” especially if demand for the water turns out to be less than expected.

Massara says that Poseidon should have to pay its own way as it promised, but because its Huntington Beach and Carlsbad projects are “not economical,” subsidies are required to get them up and running.

“Every time they walk into a hearing they go, ‘The price is coming down. We know how to do it really cheap now.’ But when you dust off the rhetoric, you realize that it’s still much more expensive than existing water supplies,” Massara complains.

Surfrider Foundation’s California director, Joe Geever, agrees that Poseidon’s plans are unrealistic without subsidies. “Ocean desalination is so energy intensive that the price of that water will never be competitive with any other source of water,” he explains. “Poseidon’s water is 40 percent more energy intensive than pumping the water all the way here from Sacramento. How will the price ever get competitive if they don’t get subsidies?”

Poseidon’s Maclaggan acknowledges the high energy costs, but he says that they apply across the board. “In truth, the escalating energy costs…will affect all means of new drinking water production,” including water reclamation (recycling sewage), he wrote in his Times column.

But the “toilet to tap” recycling plant operated by the Orange County Sanitation District in Fountain valley turns raw sewage into triple the amount of safe drinking water that Poseidon’s Huntington Beach plant will produce and at about one-third the cost, according to the OCSD (see “No Crap Tap,” OC Voice, June, 2008).

A 2005 report issued by the Pacific Institute, a non-partisan and well respected California based environmental research group, concluded that “More energy is required to produce water from desalination than from any other water supply” and that desalination costs may rise due to volatile economic conditions.

The Pacific Institute also questioned the need to subsidize the desalination industry. “The technological state of desalination is sufficiently mature and commercial to require the private sector to bear most of the research costs” it said, and public research funds should focus on environmental concerns that affect the public rather than private sector.

In a free market utopia, Poseidon would pay its way 100 percent. And if there has to be a desalination plant in Huntington Beach that’s the way Joe Geever would like it to be.

“It’s ridiculous,” he fumes, “Why should we spend taxpayers’ money on a project that a private company has already promised to build on its own?”