"Peninsula Recycled Water Project Accelerates" by News Blog

News Blog

Peninsula Recycled Water Project Accelerates

October 23, 2011

The thickening cloud of doom around the Regional Desalination Project is shifting more attention to alternative water sources developed by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District.

One of those is expanded of wastewater recycling—and it's moving forward at a fast clip, according to a press release from Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency.

MRWPCA plans to announce Thursday, Oct. 27, the details of an expedited Monterey Peninsula Groundwater Replenishment Project. That's a fancy name for taking wastewater from the MRWPCA treatment plant, and instead of discharging it into the ocean, injecting it into the Seaside Aquifer.

The project can provide an estimated 2,700 acre-feet of water, which would blend with groundwater before being pumped out and treated for potable use, a system modeled after one in Orange County.

That's a significant chunk of the roughly 10,500 acre-feet of drinking water that California American Water has been ordered by the state to stop pumping from the Carmel River by the end of 2016.

On the evening of October 26th, the Monterey Peninsula was attacked by sea serpents disguised as "desal experts", consultants, venture capitalists, and related camp followers. It was amazing that none of the Cal-Am and MPWRA "experts" didn't stand up and hoot the charlatans associated with the "Deep Water" proposal out of the auditorium! Doesn't anyone realize that the energy needed to desalinate a brine solution is directly proportional to the brine concentration? The slant well collection tubes associated with nearly all of the viable proposals produce a feed brine with an NTU of significantly less than 1.0, through natural sand filtration! As for the "People's Plan", using solar energy is severly limited because of the variability of solar flux! This works well for supplementary water, but cannot be relied upon for sole source, or even major source, potable water! Mr. Aga, an inspirational speaker, is free to build his own potable water store at Moss Landing, and sell his products to all comers! Why let public ownership trample his marvelous entreprenurial spirit! I cannot imagine a day when the Central Coast will have more fresh water than it can use! Water Customers North of Moss Landing are in just as bad a shortage situation, they just don't realize it yet. For now, we need to "blow up the boxes" (and the villians that reside in them) at 893 Blanco Circle in Salinas, the Capital of the "Evil Empire" that is causing Peninsula rate payers to have to jubmp through expensive hoops, just to get what they rightfully deserve.

"The thickening cloud of doom" around the Regional Desalination Project really is just the huffing and puffing of "big bad wolves" attempting to blow down the only desal project house that isn't constructed of smoke and mirrors generated by a venomous bunch of sea serpents. Monterey Peninsula mayors need to take a lesson from country singer Loretta Lynn, and stand by our man, Lndell Melton of RMC Water and Environment. I can assure you that he is the only person I know of who has the technical ability to bring this project to a successful conclusion. Kera Abraham and the staff of the MC Weekly need to ask themselves what they want: fresh water, or smoke and mirrons generated by a bunch of sea serpents dredged up from the depths of the foaming brine.

In all this madness, the only certainty is that "water is good, and we like water!" The three certainties of life in the West are death, taxes, and perennial shortages of fresh water. The last of these, shortages of fresh water, cannot be addressed by lawyers, who charge huge fees for their severly polluted aqueous products! Can anyone drink, bathe, or wash themself with a legal brief? For now, we need to support the already permitted regional water project, because it is being managged by competent, experienced professionals, who need our continued support to get the job done. .