Matt Leslie

The City of Fullerton’s proposed 2013 Legislative Platform includes the following curious line under the heading Water Quality and Water Supply:

“Support increasing the water supply in the City of Fullerton and Orange County including the use of water desalinization (sic).”

The Legislative Platform “confirms the City Council’s position on legislative issues that have the potential to directly or indirectly impact the City of Fullerton.” Why is “desalinization,” which I take to mean “desalination,” the proper term, singled out as a means of water production, when it has been shown to be impractical, expensive, and environmentally destructive?

Just two years ago Fullerton was asked to sign a letter of support for a controversial plan by a hapless company called Poseidon to build a desalination plant in Huntington Beach. If Poseidon’s proposed plant is any measure of the technology’s ability to supply water to a large population, then the City of Fullerton has no business committing itself to a platform that includes it, and one has to wonder why it has so persistently appeared.