California agency warns of risks in tapping ocean for water

LOS ANGELES, California (AP)

Companies are lining up to help California squeeze salt from the sea in its quest for new water sources, but the agency that would approve the projects says tapping the ocean could pose serious problems for the coastline.

In a report to its board of directors, the California Coastal Commission warns that allowing desalination plants to proliferate could threaten marine life, spur development in sensitive habitats and turn what has long been considered a common good -- the ocean into a commodity. ---

The report says desalination poses risks to marine life because it can trap plants and small sea creatures while drawing in water, and it releases large amounts of salt back into the ocean.

The study also says private and multinational companies that are permitted to build and run desalination plants are likely to seek profit over protection of coastal resources.

Under international free trade agreements, multinational companies could claim exemptions from state rules on coastal protection, the report says. ---

The major issue of privatization today is not just corruption and fraud; IMHO it's the cancerous 'externalities'.

What're 'externalities'? This is a term that covers the numerous ways in which a private business activity shifts the cost of those activities onto the general public, often by destroying a natural resource or habitat. When a gas station uses a cheap, unmaintained storage tank for gasoline that leaks gas into the ground, it creates a toxic waste site that kills. Long after the gas station is gone, the costs remain. When a semiconductor company stores toxic chemicals in similar tanks, we get a "superfund site" where those chemicals can cause birth defects. When private government contractors do the same thing with the radioactive wastes from refining plutonium for bombs, we get the Hanford site in eastern Washington.

This is but one of the many ways rabid corporatism 'privatizes' profits and 'socializes' costs.

There's nothing that says desalinization would necessarily kill sealife and release "large amounts of salt back into the ocean." Both impacts could be avoided -- but that'd require regulation. And we all know 'regulation' is even above 'terrorism' on the Busholini list of 'evils'.

what the hell does that have to do with "free trade"? Perhaps "corporate power agreements" would have been a better term.