Decision postponed on desalination test environmental report

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• Cambria desalination plan dealt a blow

  Cambria desalination plan dealt a blow

  An Army Corps of Engineers’ project to test the soil and sample water near the mouth of Santa Rosa Creek is not consistent with the state’s rules and goals for the habitat and coastline there, the California Coastal Commission ruled during a hearing Dec. 9.

  Whether that unanimous decision will be a death knell for the proposed tests there — and ultimately for intake and outfall facilities for a Cambria Community Services District desalination plant — is yet to be determined.

  Such a plant would be located elsewhere, off the beach.

• Cambria directors to put alternatives to desalination back on the table

  Cambria directors to put alternatives to desalination back on the table

  The Cambria Community Services District — still reeling from the California Coastal Commission’s unanimous Dec. 9 vote against a series of sampling tests near the mouth of Santa Rosa Creek — is now seeking other possible locations from which to draw salty or brackish water into a desalination plant, and will also be taking a look at other possible alternatives for bringing stable new water supplies to town.

  CCSD directors and staff said Jan. 19 they also expect to consult soon with the district’s constituents and its project partner, the Army Corps of Engineers.

  Alternatives would be considered during federal-and- state level environmental studies being done for the district’s desalination project that, so far, doesn’t have a location from which to get salty water and into which to deposit the hypersaline brine that the desalination process produces.

• Nipomo revs up pipeline efforts

  Nipomo revs up pipeline efforts

  EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to include links for information on the water-shortage publicity campaign and opposition to the Santa Maria water pipeline project.

  Every day, when residents on the Nipomo Mesa fill up their coffee pots, irrigate their lawns or take a shower, they’re using water that comes from under their feet.

  Nipomo residents rely on water from an enormous underground aquifer that covers a surface area of about 256 square miles and serves parts of southern San Luis Obispo and northern Santa Barbara counties.

• Viewpoint: Development a bad fit for Pismo

  Viewpoint: Development a bad fit for Pismo

  The 154-acre Los Robles del Mar residential development proposed to be added to the city of Pismo Beach is an outdated project whose traffic impacts, questionable water supply, layout, mass grading and needless destruction of oak woodland require serious reconsideration. This project is a dinosaur, conceived in the 1980s, designed in the 1990s, and trying ever since to find support with a skeptical public.

  The project seeks to jam more than 300 residential units onto the site, which is underlain by one of the most easily eroded soils in the world, the Pismo loamy sand. For more than 100 years, this soil type has been recognized for its erodibility. It was the site of a major restoration project by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s to combat poor agricultural practices that had led to massive erosion at that time. Much of the work was done within a mile of the Los Robles del Mar site and some of the CCC’s handiwork is still functioning and visible today in the same small valley.

  Because most

• Edible landscaping takes food plants beyond bounds of vegetable patch

  Edible landscaping takes food plants beyond bounds of vegetable patch

  Food plants have jumped the fence from the kitchen garden.