Desalination Fight Surges Toward Election

The two sides in the bitter battle over desalination in Marin will face off with competing ballot measures in November's election, as the Marin Municipal Water District board voted recently to put its own desalination measure on the ballot. Coupled with the Marin Responsible Water Policy Ballot Initiative, which was put forth by opponents of desalination and qualified for the ballot in June behind more than 18,000 petition signatures, two ballot measures with seemingly similar intentions are on a collision course for Nov. 2. Both measures ask voters to decide if they should have the right to vote on desalination, but they do so to different degrees. The board could have given voters the right to decide on desalination by passing the initiative as an ordinance at its recent meeting in San Rafael, but declined to do so, saying that its language restricts the district's ability to explore its options. As the ongoing standoff has reached a crescendo, San Rafael residents are prominent on both sides of the battle. The San Rafael-based Marin Conservation League, backed the district's measure. Its opponents, the Marin Water Coalition, say a plant would be a costly boondoggle. Desalination, a process in which excess salt and minerals are removed from bay water to convert it to fresh water, likely will be front and center between now and November. The district's plan calls for using reverse osmosis technology to turn San Rafael Bay water into drinkable water, providing a potential drought-proof water supply. Opponents say it is unnecessary given the district's current water supply and would be costly and damaging to the environment. Marin Conservation League President Nona Dennis said the league did not support desalination now, but suggested that technological improvements in the years ahead could change that. She said the league treats the issue of desalination and the public's right to vote on it as separate issues. "A lot of people who are really adamantly opposed to desalination have used the citizen's initiative to kill it right now," she said. "[The measure] effectively cuts off any opportunity for the district to continue even talking about it. We feel that the public should have a right to vote, but that it should be played as a trump card, not to end the discussion."  Mill Valley attorney Kerry Stoebner called the league's position "inexplicable," saying that the district never intended to put desalination before the voters. "It was only when met with this amazing effort of volunteers collecting [18,000] signatures asking for the right to vote on desalination that the board came up with its own measure," she said. "And that was simply an effort to diffuse and confuse the voters." Whichever measure gets more votes will become law as long as it gets more than 50 percent of the vote. But it is unclear how long it will be before desalination would even be ready to go to voters. The district board voted 4-0 last August to proceed with the plan, but suspended it in April so that its staff could analyze declining water demand in Marin. The results of that analysis, expected to be ready in early 2011, will dictate the future of the district's desalination plans. Depending on the success of the competing ballot measures in November, the voters could take it from there.