Calif. near impact report on Monterey desalination

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The California Public Utilities Commission said on Monday that a draft environmental impact report will be issued soon for a proposed desalination plant on the Monterey Peninsula that is to open by end-2015.

California American Water Co wants to build its Coastal Water Project, planned to supply 11,730 acre-feet of water per year for public use, next to an existing power plant at Moss Landing in Monterey County. After a public comment period in February and March for the draft report, a final environmental impact report could result in mid-2009.

The $250 million plant is still many permits and years away from operation, said California American Water spokeswoman Catherine Bowie.

The Monterey Peninsula is reliant on the Carmel River for much of its drinking water, and the water company in the area, California American Water, was told it has to cut its take from the river, Bowie said.

The company is a subsidiary of American Water based in New Jersey.

There are some 19 desalination plants proposed for California in various stages of development but none have started construction, said Heather Cooley of the Pacific Institute in Oakland.

The plants will not be on-line in time to help California combat a probable drought in coming years, but if a drought is severe, it may increase interest in desalination, as it did during the California drought of the late 1980s.

The first of this new wave of plants is the Poseidon Resources $300 million Carlsbad Desalination Project in northern San Diego County. Construction on it is to begin in summer 2009 and it should open near the end of 2011, said Scott Maloni of Poseidon.

That plant received final state approval in August, more than 10 years since the project was announced and more than five years in the regulatory permitting process.

The Carlsbad project is to convert 56,000 acre-feet a year (50 million gallons per day) of seawater into drinking water, enough for about 112,000 homes.

Poseidon Resources, a private company, has 30-year water purchase agreements with nine different public water agencies for the Carlsbad plant's water.

Developers of some of the 19 proposed desalination plants put plans on hold to see if the Carlsbad plant would receive state approval.

Another Poseidon project, in Huntington Beach in Orange County, is to open by end-2012 if it gets California regulatory approval in 2009, Pseidon's Maloni said. The Huntington Beach plant is to be the same size as the Carlsbad project and will cost $340 million, said Maloni.

These two Poseidon plants are the first of a new wave of desalination plants for California that are bigger and more efficient than ones proposed decades ago.

A handful of relatively small desalination plants operate in California now.

The first plant for large residential water supplies was built by the city of Santa Barbara after the drought of 1987-1992, Cooley said.

The plant was built but never went into operation. By 1992, when it was ready to go, rains came, ending the severe drought, and the city connected to the state water project.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Gary Hill)