A Sacramento Bee columnist took a look today at a possible Orange County project that should sound familiar: A desalination plant.
The difference between the OC project and a local Carlsbad project that would create 50 million gallons of drinking water a day: The environmental community supports the OC one.
Environmentalists have fought the Carlsbad project proposed by Connecticut-based Poseidon Resources Corp. They argue that the plant will suck in marine life floating in the sea around the plant, leaving dead zones behind in the water.
But in Orange County, the Bee says:
An umbrella agency that plans and manages the county’s water supply is researching the possibility of building a $140 million desalination plant that would take its water not directly from the ocean but from the groundwater table below. … The water would not be pulled directly from the ocean, meaning that tiny sea creatures typically caught up in such pumping systems would be entirely unaffected.