Desalination Plant Approved For Huntington Beach

Some Orange Country Residents Could Be Drinking Ocean Water In A Few Years If A Beach-Side Desalination Plant Approved Yesterday Is Built
​CBS 2/KCAL 9
(AP) HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. Some Orange Country residents could be drinking ocean water in a few years if a beach-side desalination plant approved yesterday is built.
Huntington Beach’s city council narrowly voted in favor of the plant that would produce up to 50 million gallons of fresh water daily out of ocean water that’s already pumped into an adjacent power plant.

The $250 million dollar facility still must be approved by state and regional regulators.
Backers say the plant would provide an important alternative to the existing water supply.
But opponents say it’s inappropriate to build more industrial plants along the city’s tourist-heavy beaches and worry sea life could be killed by the plant’s briny discharge.
The plant’s designer is a small, Connecticut-based company called Poseidon Resources Corporation. A smaller plant that the company built in Tampa Bay, Florida was plagued by technical and financial problems and was taken over by a public water agency.
(© 2006 The Associated Press.)