On the surface, desalination sounds like a brilliant idea. But transforming ocean water into something safe and drinkable on a large scale requires more than a magic wand.
It requires hundreds of millions of dollars, huge amounts of energy, and a place to dump the salty sludge created for the process.
The foreign-owned company Poseidon has been trying for over 15 years to represent this impossible dream on the California coast. Now they’ve targeted Orange County, promising to turn a highly polluted Huntington Beach site into a water plant.
But the more I learn about this scheme, the worse it tastes. it puts me in the mouth.
When I saw Gov. Gavin Newsom join in to push it through, my stomach turned. The deal that Poseidon proposes is not drinkable; It is poisonous. None of us should swallow it.
Poseidon’s sales pitch paints a pretty picture of its operations. But in reality, it is a declaration of war on marine ecology.
Its massive intake suction destroys millions of marine creatures essential to the coastal ecosystem. It then dumps thousands of gallons of hyper-salty waste into the ocean.
Its financial model treats taxpayers the same.
Poseidon claims to be a leading innovator providing a necessary service to customers. But the company is the shadowy offshoot of a foreign-owned conglomerate whose true genius lies in turning public money into private profit.
How revealing that instead of presenting its case in open debate before water districts, county supervisors, or directly to voters via a ballot measure, the company has surreptitiously pursued back-channel methods to siphon extraordinary sums of taxpayer money.
In For the past several months, Poseidon has allegedly tried to extort more than $1,000,000 million in cash from taxpayers through three members of the California Debt Limit Allocation Commission (CDLAC).
Have you ever heard of this body?
Me neither, and that’s the point. Until I read about the company’s big-money bid, I didn’t know that State Treasurer Fiona Ma could leave a loophole open for a foreign-owned private company to seize such huge amounts of people’s money.
And for what? Desalination is the most expensive source of water in the world. Taxpayers in Orange County could pay four times more per gallon than other sources of H2O in Southern California.
Sure, investors in Poseidon could kiss like bandits, but where does that leave Would normal people have this Robin-Hood arrangement in reverse?
Ordinary customers would spend more money out of pocket on higher bills, incur more utility debt, and face greater danger of being cut off when they can’t pay.
In addition to that, any construction at the Huntington Beach site on Pacific Coast Highway would generate pollutants so harmful that it is listed as a state toxic hotspot, among the worst 1% of the nation.
Who pays for injuries and illnesses resulting from residents’ exposure to arsenic, lead, mercury, benzene, asbestos, and other dreaded compounds that become airborne through of dust carried inland by coastal winds?
L Huntington Beach property values could also be affected.
Seniors like me have to keep an eye out for scams. Whether it’s phone calls, emails, or even a knock on the door, those who seek to play on our fear, our kinship with the vulnerable, or our hopes for the next generation to take our money may be clever in their deception.
The sales pitch of Poseidon and his army of lobbyists to get the money and get this desalination plant approved sets my alarm bells ringing.
As an immigrant, I am used to correcting the people who hear me speak with an accent in meetings and assume that’s why I don’t understand what’s going on around me.
As a mother and grandmother, I’ve heard many excuses over the years and have learned to push for the truth.
What bothers me about Poseidon is that his campaign seems to treat me and other Californians as gullible.
We need to show them that they are NOT we are, and tell the governor, the state treasurer, and anyone who has an ounce of e opinion on this plan to stop this scam while we can.
Linda Perez is past president of her union and interested in the environment and the rights of free health insurance for all. Elected delegate of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, she has lived in Hollywood for more than 40 years.