Regulators Reject Water Desalination Project in Parched California

May 25, 2022--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--In the midst of an historic drought, where cities have had to impose limits on water use, a California panel charged with protecting the state's coastline voted unanimously to deny a permit for a proposed $1.4 billion water desalination project. A spokesperson for the developer, Poseidon Water (Boston, Massachusetts), a unit of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, L.P. (NYSE:BIP) (Toronto, Ontario), said "there's no path forward for the project," which has been under development for nearly two decades. On May 12, the California Coastal Commission (San Francisco, California) voted 11-0, with one abstention, to deny a permit for the proposed Huntington Beach Desalination Facility. The Huntington Beach project would have produced about 50 million gallons of fresh water a day for 400,000 customers across Orange County, California.