In December 2019, the Orange County Register reported on a Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board workshop about Poseidon Water's planned desalination plant in Huntington Beach. The board presented a draft permit, with a decision scheduled for April 3. Forty-seven speakers opposed the project and 20 backed it. The plant was expected to cost about $1 billion and deliver 56,000 acre-feet a year, enough for roughly 450,000 Orange County residents.
The report showed how drawn out permitting for large seawater desalination on the California coast had become. The central issue was protecting small marine organisms during seawater intake.
Source: Orange County Register