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IN THIS ISSUE – “This is unprecedented territory. We’ve never done anything like this before.”
California’s largest water supplier on mandating residential cutbacks
POLICY & POLITICS
- State Revenue Below Forecast for March, But Remains High
- Senate Dems’ $68-Billion Wish List for FY22-23 Budget Surplus
- CA GOP Convenes to Mull 2022 Candidates: “We’re Zero for 8 in 20 Years”
- Next Speaker of the US House May Come From “The Other California”
- California Politicians Eye Feinstein’s Senate Seat…in Whispers
WATER
- Largest Water Supplier Mandates SoCal Residential Cutbacks
- Coastal Commission Staff Pours Cold Water on Huge Desalination Plant
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.
FOR THE WEEK ENDING APRIL 29, 2022
State Revenue Below Forecast for March, But Remains High
Dept. of Finance
TAX RECEIPTS
Preliminary General Fund cash receipts for the month of March were $199 million below the forecast of $21.047 billion.
Agency cash receipts for the first nine months of the 2021-22 fiscal year were $17.35 billion above the 2022-23 Governor’s Budget forecast of $138.348 billion.
Personal income tax cash receipts to the General Fund for the first nine months of the fiscal year were $10.362 billion above the forecast of $88.342 billion.
Cash receipts for March were $332 million above the forecast of $7.18 billion. Withholding receipts were $83 million above the forecast of $9.091 billion. Other cash receipts were $474 million above the forecast of $1.874 billion. Refunds issued in March were $219 million above the expected $3.656 billion.
Corporation tax cash receipts for the first nine months of the fiscal year were $8.124 billion above the forecast of $20.297 billion. Cash receipts for March were $9 million above the month’s forecast of $9.95 billion. Estimated payments were $248 million above the forecast of $950 million, other payments were $652 million above the $997 million forecast.
ECONOMY & JOBS
California real GDP grew by 7.8 percent in 2021 —the highest growth rate since 1984—following a decrease of 2.8 percent in 2020 (the largest contraction since 2009). Similarly, U.S. real GDP increased by 5.7 percent in 2021 (also the highest growth rate since 1984) following a decrease of 3.4 percent in 2020 (the largest contraction since 1946).
California’s share of U.S. real GDP increased to 14.8 percent in 2021, growing from 14.5 percent in 2020 and 14.4 percent in 2019. California personal income increased by 8.5 percent in 2021 following 8.6-percent growth in 2020 while U.S. personal income grew by 7.4 percent in 2021 after 6.5-percent growth in 2020.
Total wages and salaries continue to be the main driver of personal income growth for both the state and the nation, with California total wages increasing by 12.5 percent in 2021 (the highest growth rate since 2000) and U.S. total wages increasing by 9.3 percent (the highest growth rate since 1984). California’s share of U.S. personal income increased to 14.2 percent in 2021, following growth of 14.1 percent in 2020 and 13.8 percent in 2019.
California’s unemployment rate decreased from 5.3 percent in February 2022 to 4.9 percent in March 2022. California added 60,200 nonfarm jobs in March 2022, driven by gains in leisure and hospitality (14,800), followed by professional and business services (10,400), educational and health services (9,000), construction (8,900), trade, transportation, and utilities (5,300), other services (4,900), financial activities (3,600), manufacturing (2,900), information (200), and government (200). The number of jobs in mining and logging remained unchanged. As of March 2022, California has recovered 89.3 percent of the nearly 2.8 million nonfarm jobs lost in March and April 2020.
REAL ESTATE
California permitted 136,000 units on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) basis in February 2022, up 27.6 percent from January 2022, and up 17.4 percent from February 2021. February 2022 permits consisted of 72,000 single-family units (up 6.5 percent from January 2022, but down 0.6 percent year-over-year) and 64,000 multi-family units (up 64.6 percent from January 2022 and also up 47.7 percent year-over-year).
The statewide median price of existing single-family homes reached a new record-high of $849,080 in March 2022, up 10.1 percent from February 2022 and up 11.9 percent from March 2021. This was 2.6 percent higher than the previous record of $827,940 set in August 2021. Sales of existing single-family homes in California totaled 426,970 units (SAAR) in March 2022, up 0.5 percent from February 2022, but down
4.4 percent from March 2021. Year-to-date through March, sales volume averaged 432,050 units (SAAR), which was 7 percent lower than in the same period in 2021 but 12.3 percent above the first quarter of 2019.
https://dof.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/Forecasting/Economics/Documents/Apr-22.pdf
State Senate Dems’ $68-Billion Wish List for FY22-23 Budget Surplus
Politico
Californians could receive billions in tax rebates later this year as the state’s fiscal surplus continues to explode and the mid-May State Budget negotiations approach.
State Senate Democrat leaders on Thursday released an extensive wish list for spending the windfall — now estimated to be as high as $68 billion. That staggering figure is the high end of a projection from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which in January put the number far lower, at $29 billion.
California’s swelling coffers mark a sharp reversal from early in the pandemic, when unemployment spiked and officials braced for steep budget cuts. Instead, a booming stock market and tech sector have brought in record revenues, even as Californians with lower incomes contended with job losses and sky-high housing costs. Other states are also awash in cash.
Atop the spending list is a proposal to send $8 billion in payments to taxpayers, a move that Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Budget Chair Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) pitched as a way to combat rising costs of energy and consumer goods.
The plan would also include rebates to small businesses and nonprofits to help repay federal unemployment debt, along with grants that could be used to offset new costs from the state’s supplemental Covid-19 sick leave program.
The rebate proposal is reminiscent of the Golden State Stimulus checks the state mailed out last year. Meanwhile Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed an $11 billion relief package to offset rising gas prices. The governor is expected to reveal an updated state spending plan next month.
The largest chunk of the surplus — around $43 billion — would go to bolster the state’s budget reserves under the Senate proposal, which the LAO in November estimated to be north of $21 billion for the 2022-23 fiscal year.
The Senate proposal also calls for large increases in education spending. The plan would increase the base funding schools receive by $5 billion for the upcoming year and by $10 billion in 2024-25. Those dollars would come out of a separate pool of revenue that the state is constitutionally required to spend on K-12 schools.
Nearly $5 billion would be directed to universities and community colleges for deferred facilities maintenance and expansion of student housing, a dearth of which has led to criticism of the state’s three public higher education systems. Another $1 billion would be earmarked for preschool programs and waivers to support childcare for low-income residents.
Senate Democrats’ Proposal:
CA GOP Convenes to Mull 2022 Candidates: “We’re Zero for 8 in 20 Years”
CalMatters
Not many were fooling themselves at the California Republican Party convention: The state GOP is in dire straits.
“In case you haven’t noticed out there, we’re 0 for 8 in over 20 years,” Shawn Steel, former party chairman, told delegates Sunday. “It’s time we won statewide offices.”
But just how the party can pull itself out of its rut is less clear.
It probably didn’t help to have the distraction of U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the subject of a bombshell report just days before the convention: He was caught on tape talking to fellow Republicans about urging then-President Donald Trump to resign after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol.
Tea Party California Caucus leader Randall Jordan said the audio showed McCarthy’s true colors: “We’ve never been a friend of Kevin McCarthy’s. He basically stands for everything Donald Trump tried to weed out of our party.”
But others including state party Chairperson Jessica Millan Patterson, a McCarthy ally, rallied behind him. “When Republicans take the House, I have no doubt that he will be the next Speaker of the House,” she told reporters.
And when McCarthy took the stage Saturday night for the convention’s keynote speech, it was to a standing ovation from about 500 delegates gathered in an Anaheim hotel ballroom. He praised Trump, blasted Democrats and the media and called for party unity.
Still, the state GOP has much bigger things to worry about than the kerfuffle of the moment. To become more relevant, California Republicans must present the right identity to voters.
Party officials and delegates also sought to preach a message of unity, in particular: “Don’t trash other Republicans.” But divisions surfaced during the voting for official party endorsements.
On the fourth ballot, Dahle eked out the nod over Anthony Trimino, who had the support of party activists and who set up a boxing ring at the convention, with posters advertising his fight against Newsom. (The party did not endorse in the unsuccessful recall campaign against Newsom last September, or before the primary in 2014 or 2018, either.)
It also took multiple ballots to settle the attorney general endorsement between party factions to take on Rob Bonta, the Democrat and Newsom appointee. In the second round, Nathan Hochman passed the 60% threshold against Eric Early, who said it’s California Republicans’ destiny “to fight the evil woke.”
Also, the party endorsed Mark Meuser, in his long-shot bid to defeat U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat whom Meuser called Newsom’s “appointed puppet.” Angela Jacobs Underwood was backed in the race for lieutenant governor. Lance Christensen was endorsed for superintendent of public instruction, a nonpartisan race that could be decided in June. And Lanhee Chen, who promised an “audit a day” if elected controller, won the party blessing uncontested.
The party did not endorse for insurance commissioner, or for secretary of state, though Rachel Hamm, who is backed by Trump allies and disputes that he lost in 2020, finished ahead of Rob Bernosky, a last-minute candidate supported by the party establishment, though well short of the 60% support needed.
California Republicans have been on a steep downward slide for nearly two decades, since they triumphantly recalled Gov. Gray Davis in 2003.
The last GOP candidates to win statewide came just a few years later — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in 2006 — and efforts to attract major candidates who can turn around the party’s fortunes have become increasingly dire. In the past two U.S. Senate races, in 2016 and 2018, Republicans finished outside the top two in the all-party June primary and did not even make it to the November general election, while gubernatorial hopefuls now routinely lose to Democrats by 20 percentage points or more.
After the push to recall Newsom fizzled last fall, all of the leading Republicans who ran to replace him — including talk radio host Larry Elder, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and 2018 gubernatorial candidate John Cox — passed on challenging him again this year, forcing the party to start from scratch. Those who are running have little name recognition or money.
The party is also nearing irrelevance in Sacramento, where it holds fewer than a quarter of the seats in the state Legislature. And even after a handful of pickups in 2020, Republicans make up only about a fifth of California’s congressional delegation.
Next Speaker of the US House May Come From “The Other California”
Associated Press
BAKERSFIELD (AP) — The next speaker of the U.S. House could very well hail from California — not Nancy Pelosi’s slice of the Golden State, but the other California, Donald Trump’s California.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is a son of the Central Valley, a farming and oil-pumping heartland that eagerly embraced the former president. A swath of rural conservatism amid California’s progressive politics, it’s where residents often feel ostracized, resented and left behind by their liberal neighbors in San Francisco to the north and Los Angeles to the south.
“We’re the forgotten valley,” said retired insurance salesman Chuck Hall at a Republican Party dinner last week in Fresno.
It’s here where McCarthy launched his political rise, from a young entrepreneur who set up a sandwich counter inside his uncle’s frozen yogurt shop to one of the more powerful Republicans in state and national politics. His career took off during the Trump era, when McCarthy was an early backer who understood the magnetic pull of Trump’s grievance-laden populism in drawing working-class people away from Democrats and into the Republican fold.
But this past week, McCarthy’s future as the party’s leader in the House was thrown into jeopardy after audio was released of him telling fellow Republicans in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that Trump should resign.
As McCarthy relies on Trump to help Republicans win control of the House in the November elections and seize the speaker’s gavel from San Francisco Democrat Pelosi, the year-old comments raised new questions about their relationship and McCarthy’s ability to lead a party still beholden to Trump.
“I don’t have to have the job,” McCarthy told The Associated Press in an interview last week in his district in the days before The New York Times released the audio of his 2021 remarks.
“You know, I’ve done what I’m going to do. Now, it’s really what is the legacy you leave?”
The release of the audio didn’t dampen McCarthy’s welcome at a California Republican Party banquet Saturday night in Anaheim, where he received a standing ovation from a crowd of over 500.
In a speech, he never mentioned the audio directly but took a dig at MSNBC and CNN, which aired clips of his remarks. “They’ve got more letters in their names than they have viewers,” he said.
He also praised Trump repeatedly, at one point saying the former president should have received the Nobel Peace Prize.
McCarthy’s career in many ways reflects the arc of Republican politics, coming of age in the heady optimism of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and then shifting to align with Trump’s more hard-edged criticism of the status quo and Democratic policies.
But McCarthy’s handling of the Capitol attack, especially as the House’s Jan. 6 committee investigates his conversations with Trump that day, will emerge as a defining chapter of his time in Congress and, perhaps, his future as a leader. McCarthy had been critical of Trump immediately after the siege, which he called “un-American” and said was one of the saddest days of his career, before dashing to visit Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida to patch things up.
“He still has the bruises from that,” said Dave Noerr, the long-serving mayor of nearby Taft, a historic oil-drilling town. “He will wear those bruises for perpetuity. So that was a very tough lesson.”
The Trump years seem to have created a hangover in the Central Valley, where residents said they are tired of the politics and the fighting in Washington, and just want some relief from the stresses in their daily lives.
Inflation has sent gas prices sky-high, at nearly $6 a gallon, pushing the price of a fill up into triple digits for some. Crime remains a problem as the region struggles with population fluctuations and income inequality. The coronavirus crisis hangs over the community as it does elsewhere as the nation emerges from the pandemic.
Families watching kids at a weeknight Little League game held mixed views, with some believing McCarthy is part of the problem in Washington and others seeing him as a potential solution.
Garrilynn Dickerson, a respiratory therapist and mother of two who treated COVID-19 patients at a local hospital, said she just wants Republicans and Democrats to work together.
“Honestly, I just want unity,” said the independent voter who said she likes libertarian leaning Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., but also wants to see McCarthy reach out more to Democrats. “I don’t like the mudslinging.”
Despite its conservative roots, the place that’s often called the Texas of the West is also changing. The once predominantly white population is fading as Latinos and other demographic groups gain in numbers. The Bakersfield City Council is working on new district lines to incorporate the growing Punjabi population.
Christian Romo, chairman of the Kern County Democrats, said the birthplace of the farm workers movement and the home to civil rights labor leader Cesar Chavez is coming into its own. As second- and third-generation immigrants become eligible to vote, their party allegiance is highly sought after by Democrats and Republicans working to boost numbers and turnout.
“We’re a red dot in a very blue county, but I keep telling people the blue wave is cracking through that red wall,” he said.
To prepare for the November elections, McCarthy is reaching back to the tools of another former Republican speaker, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who won control in the 1994 election after presenting voters with the “Contract with America” list of GOP priorities.
McCarthy has tasked his rank and file with assembling its own list of priorities to present to the public this summer. He acknowledged his ideas are not being embraced by the other GOP leader in Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has said the election will be a referendum on President Joe Biden and Democratic policies.
“This is where Mitch and I disagree,” McCarthy said. “I think we have to lay out to the American public what you’re going to do ahead of time, because when the people go to vote, they vote for the agenda.”
Longtime Kern County Republican Party leader Cathy Abernathy, who first hired McCarthy as a young congressional intern a generation ago, said she is not convinced that Republicans will be able to win control this fall, despite outside analysis suggesting the election is theirs to lose.
“I don’t take it for granted,” she said.
It’s not the first time McCarthy has reached for the speaker’s gavel, having dropped out of a race abruptly in 2015 when it was clear he did not have support from hard-right lawmakers.
Yet it’s not at clear that this time he will be able to do much better. The past several Republican speakers, including Gingrich and Reps. John Boehner of Ohio and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, have all abandoned the job, chased out of town by restive rank-and-file lawmakers in their own party.
“Do I want to be speaker? Yes. But I don’t have to be speaker,” McCarthy said. “My life will be fine one way or another.”
California Politicians Eye Feinstein’s Senate Seat…in Whispers
Politico
Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s potential successors don’t want to talk about it.
Ambitious Democrats are preparing for what happens when the 88-year-old California senator’s seat becomes available for the first time in a generation — a sea change for California politics that would likely launch a frenzied intraparty rush for the coveted post. Most everyone is operating under the assumption that Feinstein will not run for reelection in 2024. Contenders are stockpiling cash and quietly assessing their options.
A general reluctance to publicly encourage Feinstein to step down hasn’t stopped people from keeping open lines of communication to Gov. Gavin Newsom in the event the senator resigns and the Democratic governor gets to handpick her replacement.
“All the folks who are interested do a very good job keeping in touch,” said a Newsom adviser who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
An open Senate seat is a rare opportunity that, in deep-blue California, effectively offers lifetime tenure to whichever Democrat prevails. A number of rising stars in the House, most prominently Rep. Katie Porter and Rep. Adam Schiff, have the name recognition and campaign war chests that could position them to win the seat and stay there for decades. But no one wants to be seen nudging Feinstein toward the exits.
“What do you gain from that?” asked Courtni Pugh, who managed then-Democratic state Senate leader Kevin de León’s unsuccessful 2018 challenge to Feinstein. “At the end of the day, people want to be respectful.”
Privately, Democrats around the state have reacted with a mixture of sadness, frustration and resignation to an explosive San Francisco Chronicle story published last week in which Feinstein’s colleagues detailed the long-serving senator’s perceived cognitive decline. That story, which bolstered previous reporting by POLITICO about Feinstein’s capacity to carry out her duties, consumed California political circles for days.
“I get calls from people saying, ‘Who can I call to talk about this? Who can talk to her? We need to do something,’” said a Democratic political consultant who has worked with Feinstein, also granted anonymity.
Publicly, it’s a different matter. Feinstein has remained adamant that she intends to serve out the rest of her term, saying she has continued to deliver for her constituents. Pushing her to the exits before 2024 could backfire on the ambitious Democrats who would like to claim her mantle. Even as Feinstein has slid to a career polling nadir, no one wants to draw opposition from her political sphere or cause her to endorse a rival.
“The real question is whether I’m still an effective representative for 40 million Californians, and the record shows that I am,” Feinstein told the Chronicle last week, adding that colleagues have not expressed doubts to her.
Part of the calculus involves maintaining California’s influence in Washington. Feinstein and her defenders have long stressed how critical her seniority is to ensuring California’s priorities translate into federal policy. Sen. Alex Padilla, whom Newsom appointed to replace Vice President Kamala Harris, sits near the bottom of the Senate hierarchy after taking office in 2021. Whoever replaces Feinstein would join Padilla by the foot of the ladder.
“Senator Feinstein is an essential leader for California,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “She is among the most effective members in the history of the Senate, and I deeply appreciate her work in Washington to address our most important problems, including homelessness, transportation and water.”
A representative for Porter declined to comment on a possible Senate run and said the congresswoman is focused on defending her seat in 2022. A representative for Schiff, who is also mulling a House leadership bid, lauded Feinstein and said Schiff supports “her continued service on behalf of all Californians.”
Both lawmakers have raised considerable sums; Schiff has $18.1 million in cash on hand, and Porter is close behind at $17.8 million. But Schiff’s staff noted the congressman could use the funds to assist other Democrats, and Porter’s staff pointed to a contested House reelection bid.
The Feinstein furor could allow Newsom to continue playing kingmaker, deepening his imprint on California’s leadership. The governor has already appointed Padilla to a vacant Senate seat, and he has selected California’s attorney general and secretary of state because of resignations. If Feinstein resigns, Newsom would likely choose her successor, instantly cementing that person as the frontrunner to retain the seat. Contenders who failed to win Newsom’s nod would have a far narrower path to the Senate than in an open election.
A Newsom spokesperson noted that the administration does not expect a Senate vacancy before 2024. But should it happen, Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland is widely seen as a likely choice, given Newsom’s public commitment to elevating a Black woman should Feinstein step down before her term is up. Lee was a contender for the seat to which Newsom ultimately appointed Padilla.
“It’s something she would remain very interested in,” said Nathan Barankin, a political adviser to Lee. He added that Lee has not spoken directly to Newsom about a potential opening.
Progressive Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna, who has cultivated the kind of broader following that could buoy a statewide run, said he would back Lee should she seek the seat — although he did not rule out running if she does not.
“Certainly I would look at that, but it’s unclear,” Khanna said in an interview. “It depends on so many factors, whether I run.”
Democrats want to accord Feinstein the respect they believe she is due after decades of service. There are also practical considerations: People who have worked with or against Feinstein predict that urging her to move on would have the opposite effect.
“The whole history of Dianne Feinstein is whatever people pressure her to do, she won’t do,” said Garry South, a Democratic operative who has worked on major statewide campaigns in California. “So I’m dubious that she decides to call it a day before her term is up.”
Largest Water Supplier Mandates SoCal Residential Cutbacks
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Southern California’s gigantic water supplier took the unprecedented step Tuesday of requiring about 6 million people to cut their outdoor watering to one day a week as drought continues to plague the state.
The board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California declared a water shortage emergency and required the cities and water agencies it supplies to implement the cutback on June 1 and enforce it or face hefty fines.
“We don’t have enough water supplies right now to meet normal demand. The water is not there,” Metropolitan Water District spokesperson Rebecca Kimitch said. “This is unprecedented territory. We’ve never done anything like this before.”
The Metropolitan Water District uses water from the Colorado River and the State Water Project to supply 26 public water agencies, which provide it to 19 million people, or 40% of the state’s population.
But record dry conditions have strained the system, lowering reservoir levels, and the State Water Project, which gets its water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, has estimated it will only be able to deliver about 5% of its usual allocation this year.
January, February and March of this year were the driest three months in recorded state history in terms of rainfall and snowfall, Kimitch said.
The Metropolitan Water District said that the 2020 and 2021 water years had the least rainfall on record for two consecutive years. In addition, Lake Oroville, the State Water Project’s main reservoir, reached its lowest point last year since being filled in the 1970s.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked people to voluntarily reduce their water consumption by 15%, but so far residents have been slow to meet that goal.
Several water districts have instituted water conservation measures. On Tuesday, the board of the East Bay Municipal Utility District voted to reduce water usage by 10% and cap daily usage for some 1.4 million customers in Contra Costa and Alameda counties, including Oakland and Berkeley.
Households will be allowed to use 1,646 gallons (6,231 litres) per day — far above the average household usage of about 200 gallons (757 litres) daily — and the agency expected that only 1% to 2% of customers will exceed the limit, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Metropolitan Water District restrictions apply to areas of Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties that rely mostly on state water supplied through the district, including some parts of Los Angeles city. Mainly urban areas are impacted.
The MWD’s client water agencies must implement either the one-day-a-week outdoor use restriction or find other ways of making equivalent reductions in water demand, Kimitch said.
Although the water agencies support the water conservation move, it remains to be seen whether the public will do it, Kimitch said.
The Metropolitan Water District will monitor water use and if the restrictions don’t work, it could order an all-out ban on outdoor watering as soon as September, she said.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers have taken the first step toward lowering the standard for how much water people use in their homes.
California’s current standard for residential indoor water use is 55 gallons (208 liters) per person per day. The rule doesn’t apply to customers, meaning regulators don’t write tickets to people for using more water than they are allowed. Instead, the state requires water agencies to meet that standard across all of its customers.
But the state Senate overwhelmingly voted last week to lower the standard to 47 gallons (178 liters) per person per day starting in 2025 and 42 gallons (159 liters) per person per day beginning in 2030.
The bill has not yet passed the Assembly, meaning it is still likely months away from becoming law.
The U.S. West is in the middle of a severe drought just a few years after record rain and snowfall filled reservoirs to capacity. Scientists say this boom-and-bust cycle is driven by climate change that will be marked by longer, more severe droughts. A study from earlier this year found the U.S. West was in the middle of a megadrought that is now the driest in at least 1,200 years.
Coastal Commission Staff Pours Cold Water on Huge Desalination Plant
Associated Press
HUNTINGTON BEACH (AP) — A report issued Monday urges a California coastal panel to deny a proposal to build a $1.4 billion desalination plant that would draw on the ocean to expand water sources in Southern California.
Staff for the California Coastal Commission recommended the panel reject Poseidon Water ’s proposal to build the 50 million gallon-a-day facility Huntington Beach. The project is up for discussion before the panel on May 12.
“This project raises significant and complex coastal protection policy issues,” staff wrote in the report, “including conformity with policies that require protection of marine life, water quality, environmentally sensitive habitat areas, and policies meant to avoid or minimize hazards associated with sea level rise, floods, tsunamis, and geologic hazards.”
Poseidon Water said it believed the commission staff erred in its recommendation.
“No water infrastructure project in the state of California has ever undergone this level of study and scrutiny,” the company said in a statement. “If this recommendation stands, it will effectively be the death knell for desalination in California.”
The proposal has been touted by some in California’s Orange County as an alternative to a long-running drought and a way to expand water sources as the region grows. But environmental groups have long opposed the plan over concerns marine life will be sucked into the plant and argue that critical infrastructure shouldn’t be built in a low-lying coastal areas as the region contends with sea level rise. They also say the water would be too expensive.
The proposal comes as California faces prolonged drought, worsened by climate change, with its nearly 40 million residents heeding repeated calls in recent years to conserve water. It also comes amid rising concern about sea level rise, with a federal report recently forecasting that seas lapping against the U.S. shore could be 10 to 12 inches (0.25 to 0.3 meters) higher by 2050.
Huntington Beach, which is known as “Surf City USA” and relies on its waves and scenic shoreline for tourism dollars, approved a proposal more than a decade ago to build the plant near a coastal power facility. The plant would draw on the sea water and convert it so it could be used to replenish the local groundwater system, a key source of drinking water for many of Orange County’s 3.2 million residents.
But the state coastal panel in 2013 recommended a series of changes to the project to protect marine life. Additional studies were completed and Poseidon updated its proposals for structures used to draw in ocean water.
Poseidon Water has been running a similar desalination plant in nearby Carlsbad, in San Diego County, since 2015.
Susan Jordan, executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network and member of the Stop Poseidon coalition, praised the recommendation Monday to deny the proposal.
In a statement, Jordan said it’s time for Poseidon Water “to recognize the deep and irrevocable flaws with this project, cut its losses and publicly recognize this project and this site are not good for Huntington Beach or California – it’s time to shut it down for good.”
Report: