Clean Water Now To Appeal Doheny Desalination Project Approval

Laguna Beach CA

13 March, 2022

2:32 PM

Description

March 13, 2022 South Orange County CA Clean Water Now To Appeal Doheny Ocean Desalination Project Certification CWN announced its intent to appeal the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board (SDRWQCB) certification of South Coast Water District's Project although unanimously approved (4-0 vote) by the Region 9, Cal-EPA agency on March 9, 2022 in Mission Viejo City Council Chambers. CWN must file its appeal with the parent State Water Resources Control Board within 30 days. Over the past few years, CWN Founder and Executive Director Roger E. Bütow has written volumes online and given testimony at hearings regarding the Project's innumerable imperfect elements: https://www.lagunabeachindy.co... https://voiceofoc.org/2021/07/... The last straw and glaring insult to legitimate grass roots protectionist NGOs like CWN who've held SCWD accountable for nearly 10 years, was the SDRWQCB's enthusiastic embrace of a distant, off-site mitigation. 30 miles away, inland and on the OC/LA County border, the earmarked 7.45 acres restoration mitigation is in the South Los Cerritos Intertidal Wetland Remediation and Restoration area. Moreover, the mitigation is not even located within the Board's geographical and jurisdictional boundaries, violating a primary mitigation metric. A SCWD official admitted that the price tag for this "direct restoration" hasn't been determined. Like the Project itself, SCWD (a small agency already awash in red ink) is writing another blank check, accumulating yet more debt burden upon its customers. Passed over was Trout Unlimited's submission (South Coast Chapter), the San Juan Creek Estuary Restoration which is at "Ground Zero," in the immediate vicinity of the extraction pumping well field. Said Founder and Executive Director Roger E. Bütow: "I just don't get it. The mitigation controversy revolves around the ocean floor larval species directly impacted near the San Juan Creek Ocean Outfall. The pipe admittedly discharges ≈10+ million gallons a day of secondary treated affluent. This is the same location where SCWD intends to comingle the discharge of its millions of gallons of hyper-saline briny waste from the treatment facility. Cumulative impacts were down-played, SD staff refused to challenge or question SCWD's incestual, self-serving, self-justifying studies. The outfall is 2 miles out into the Pacific off Doheny State Beach, at a depth of around 150 feet. Larval species in an intertidal wetland have little if anything in common with open ocean floor species. That's a Homer (DUH) Simpson no-brainer, Biology 101. Already a fiscal and ecological debacle, our appeal's main focus will be on the mitigation's fatally flawed aspects." Contact Information: Roger E. Bütow Clean Water Now (Established in 1998) Cell: (949) 280-2225 Email: [email protected] Website: www.clean-water-now.org CLEAN WATER NOW is an innovative, science-based organization committed to solution- oriented collaboration as a means of developing safe, sustainable water supplies while preserving healthy and viable ecosystems.