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Comments on the Poseidon Draft Environmental Environmental Impact Report
1)’Project Description’ and ‘Alternatives Analysis’ is Unnecessarily Narrow and Consequently Inadequate for Fully Informed Decisions
As noted in public comments on the original EIR, this recirculated EIR (REIR) fails to adequately analyze “wastewater reclamation” and “water conservation” as alternative supplies of freshwater for the affected area. The EIR instead attempts to describe the potential for increase conservation under the “no Project” alternative. Most importantly, the inadequate consideration of these feasible alternatives does not include a comparison of the environmental impacts, both positive and negative, of pursuing these alternatives over a massive desalination facility. Furthermore, a more accurate assessment of alternatives available to meet projected future water demands would allow a mix of conservation, reclamation and a smaller desalination facility with environmentally preferable sour water intake alternatives to the AES cooling water intake.
As in the original EIR, the draft REIR narrowly defines the purpose of the project as “local” in nature. We can only predict that the Response to Comments will again rely on this narrow project description to argue that reclamation and conservation are contingent upon imported water supplies and consequently do not meet the purposes of the narrow project description so as to effectively preclude any reasonable alternatives to balanced and reliable water supply portfolio. This narrow and specious approach undermines the intent of CEQA to offer the public full disclosure of the impacts of the project compared with those of dfeasible alternatives.
Excerpts from comments on the Poseidon desalination EIR written by the California Coastal Protection Network. These comments are on file with the city of Huntington Beach
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