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Permit suit could hit Carlsbad desalination project
By: North County Times - | ∞
SAN DIEGO -- An environmental group has filed a lawsuit challenging a discharge permit that could spell trouble for a proposal to build a Carlsbad plant to turn seawater into drinking water.
The Surfrider Foundation filed a lawsuit asking the court to make the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control board reconsider the discharge permit it renewed for Carlsbad's Encina Power Station in August 2006.
The permit allows the electrical station to suck in ocean water to cool its electricity-generating turbines, and then spit the water back out into the sea. A private company, Poseidon Resources, Inc., and the city of Carlsbad, are proposing to build a plant that would use a portion of the seawater the plant takes in, to filter out the salt and make it drinkable. The company has an agreement to use the cooling system, and must have the permit to build the plant.
Environmental groups say the "once-through-cooling" system harms the ocean, and that recent court decisions bar their use in the future.
A state water board in June rejected the Surfrider request to overturn the permit.
Poseidon and Carlsbad officials are seeking a permit to build the desalination plant from the California Coastal Commission.
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