060210-4

PAJARO/SUNNY Mesa Community Services District is a step closer to hooking up its pilot desal plant after a citizens land use group approved it Monday.

The pilot plant will be located at the National Refractories site in Moss Landing owned by Nader Agha.

The North County Land Use Advisory Committee gave the thumbs-up to the plant, which will produce about 30,000 gallons of water per day and serve as a model for a much larger proposed desal plant.

“We are feeling very confident now, because we got a recommendation for approval with no conditions,” Marc del Piero, attorney for the district, said Monday after the land use committee meeting.

The pilot plant is to be located off Highway 1, practically a stone’s throw from the Duke Energy power plant, the intended site of California American Water Co.’s competing proposed desal pilot plant.

In the next two to three weeks, Pajaro Sunny Mesa will go before the county’s zoning administrator, del Piero said. If he approves the pilot plant, the California Coastal Commission will also review it.

Del Piero said he’s optimistic the coastal commission will approve the plant since the agency has given the go-ahead to the same type of facility at other locations on the California coast.

“I’m hoping that we won’t have any problems, because they have had a significant amount of familiarity with these pilot projects in the past,” he said.

The San Diego-based Poseidon Resources Corp., which Pajaro/Sunny Mesa has contracted to operate and manage the pilot plant, is planning to build a similar desal plant in Carlsbad.

The large-scale desal plant would produce up to 23,000 acre-feet of water per year at a cost of about $1,100 to $1,200 per acre-foot, according to del Piero.

Peter MacLaggan, Poseidon’s vice president, said the company has prefabricated the plant’s reverse osmosis system and prefilters, which will be tested in Carlsbad before being shipped to Moss Landing.

“The objective is to find out what works best in local conditions,” he said.

It will take about 60 days from the time the plant is given final approval until it is up and running, MacLaggan said. Much of that time will be spent on plumbing and electrical work.

The plant will be housed in an 8-by-8-by 40-foot container, which will be placed on a paved area near the entrance to the National Refractories property, just off of Highway 1 in Moss Landing.

The pilot plant will include:

- two intake pump stations with a total capacity of 200 gallons per minute;

- two 6-inch intake pipelines one to collect seawater from the existing intake area of the refractories site and one to collect water from the discharge of the Moss Landing power plant;

- a sedimentation or dissolved-air flotation system to remove solids, oil, grease and algae from the seawater;

- two pretreatment filters capable of producing up to 90 gallons per minute of filtered water;

- two seawater reverse osmosis systems equipped with high-rejection membranes, each capable of producing up to 20 gallons per minute of fresh water, and

- Water storage tanks.

Under normal conditions, the pilot plant intake pump will collect up to 200 gallons per minute of seawater from the Refractories intake just south of Dolan Road, or cooling water from Duke’s power plant.

After the water travels through an initial screen, raw seawater will be processed in two parallel treatment systems.

The first will consist of a sedimentation tank or dissolved air flotation clarifier followed by a granular media filtration system. The second will have a similar operation, but will be equipped with a microfiltration system to remove smaller particles.

Each pilot plant treatment system will be capable of producing 20 gallons per minute of fresh water. The discharge water will be returned to the ocean through the existing National Refractories outfall.

“One thing that is unique is we are using full-size components,” MacLaggan said. “Eventually, the system will be two complete desal plants, so we can test different manufacturers to see that we have the most efficient plant.”

Provided the plant is approved by the county and the coastal commission, MacLaggan estimated the first part of the pilot plant would be installed in the next two to three months, and the second constructed by mid-summer to fall. The pilot plant is expected to be in operation for two to four years. “We are making progress,” he said, “and are soon going to be making water.”

Agha purchased the roughly 200-acre National Refractories property three years ago for about $7.5 million.

While Pajaro/Sunny Mesa seems to be making progress, its competitor in the race to build a desal plant, Cal Am, has been hindered because the water company is caught in a quandary between the planning department and Duke Energy, whose Moss Landing property will be used for Cal Am’s pilot plant.

“We are still pursuing our own pilot program, but we are very happy for Pajaro/Sunny Mesa,” said Catherine Bowie, Cal Am’s spokeswoman, “because for anybody to get a pilot plant to study desal is good for the future of the water supply on the Monterey Peninsula.”

Before the county planning department will issue Cal Am its permit for a pilot plant, it is requiring Duke to meet all the requirements of a mitigation plan, which includes restoring wetlands on its property.

Duke and Cal Am believe those mitigation efforts have been completed, but the planning department insists they have not.

“Duke continues to work with the county and all the stakeholders involved to arrive at a final mitigation agreement,” said Duke spokesman David Hicks. “It is our hope that we will have something finished relatively soon. Given that this work is ongoing, we don’t want to get into any further detail at this time.”

On Thursday, officials from Duke and the planning department met to discuss the mitigation efforts, said Maia Carroll, spokeswoman for the county.

“We are optimistic we will be able to resolve our issues,” Carroll said before the meeting. “If the meeting is successful, we are likely to take the permit to a hearing in March.”