Desalination Plant in New York?

It Would Be the First Desalination Plant on the Hudson River, Converting The Brackish Waters of the Lower Hudson Salted by Ocean Tides Into Fresh Water that The Residents of Rockland County Would Drink

But county residents are infuriated by the plan to spend $150 million building the plant, with 26,000 people signing petitions to block construction. For one thing, opponents say, there is no need. Rockland County receives, on average, 49 inches of rainfall annually, one of New York State's highest amounts, they say, adding that there are ways short ofdesalinationto either provide or conserve water.

As important, they say, the plant location on Haverstraw Bay is three and a half miles south of theIndian Pointnuclear power plant. Critics say the desalinated water will contain trace amounts of radioactive particles like strontium 90 that they and their children will consume for their lifetimes. The local water utility says the water would meet all federal and state standards.

On Thursday, the state's Public Service Commission is scheduled to decide whether there is a need for desalination. The ruling could set the stage for the plant's development by United Water New York, the utility that supplies 90 percent of Rockland's water (the villages Nyack and Suffern have separate systems) and a portion of Orange County's, serving a total of 300,000 residents. The Rockland Water Coalition, which includes environmental groups like Riverkeeper and Scenic Hudson, has called on the commission to state clearly that there is no need.

"The presumed need for the desal plant does not exist," a coalition consultant, Albert F. Appleton, wrote to the Public Service Commission in July. "Even if there were a need for additional water availability, there are numerous alternative ways to meet it at a price that, at most, would be 10 percent of the cost of the desal facility."

Mr. Appleton, a former commissioner of environmental protection in New York City, said he reduced water use in the city 35 percent by starting metering and other conservation measures that saved $5 billion in capital construction costs.

The Public Service Commission said in 2006 that more water resources were needed for Rockland and gave United Water permission to develop options, which resulted in the proposal for a desalination plant. A report by the commission's staff in May said the 2006 decision overestimated the county's water needs for 2014 but added, "The disparity was not so great that it invalidated the overall determination that additional water resources will be needed in the foreseeable future."

The report reset the estimated date when more water production would be needed as 2020, and urged the commission to permit construction to proceed only if specific targets for demand were met, a conclusion United Water endorsed. If demand failed to reach those projections, the plant would not be built.

Opponents have not been mollified. Laurie Seeman, a coalition leader, and other opponents said desalination was known the world over as a "decision of last resort," a costly option used in arid climates near actual seawater, not brackish tidal estuaries like the lower Hudson. She said the plant would also harm sturgeon and other species that use Haverstraw Bay as a spawning nursery or feeding ground.

Source: The News York Times

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