Environmental group Orange County Coastkeeper (OC Coastkeeper) accused Poseidon Resources on 26 March 2012 of withholding information from the California Coastal Commission (CCC) about the proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant.
OC Coastkeeper maintains that this is delaying the commission’s ability to carry out a review of the project’s feasibility.
Poseidon, on the other hand, maintains that it believes it has supplied the CCC with adequate information and that the current standoff is a rerun of what happened at Carlsbad, where the company eventually bypassed the CCC staff and dealt directly with the commission itself.
Referring to a CCC response on 20 March 2012 to Poseidon’s most recent submission in February 2012, OC Coastkeeper says that Poseidon:
Poseidon’s Scott Maloni told D&WR that the impasse had nothing to do with Poseidon’s failure to provide complete and thorough information necessary for the CCC staff to deem its application complete.
“Instead it has everything to do with the CCC staff’s preference for an alternative project design, specifically a desalination plant that utilizes an alternative subsurface seawater intake system,” Maloni responded.
Poseidon is meeting CCC staff in the next few weeks to discuss their latest notice of incomplete application for Huntington Beach.
“I hope to work out an agreement on the completeness of our application,” said Maloney, “but, if not, we are prepared to exercise our rights as an applicant and ‘call the question’ again as we did in Carlsbad.”