Coastal staff back moving Doheny desalination wells to beach day-use area

California Coastal Commission staff are recommending approval, with conditions, of South Coast Water District's request to move the seawater intake wells for its Doheny Ocean Desalination Project from the Doheny State Beach campground to the park's North Day Use Area in Dana Point. The commission is scheduled to hear the permit amendment, No. 9-20-0691-A1, on Wednesday, Oct. 7.

The commission approved the project's original coastal development permit on Oct. 13, 2022. The plant is designed to produce up to 5 million gallons of drinking water a day for the district, whose service area relies on imported water for roughly 90% of its supply, according to a Sept. 24 staff report. It would draw seawater through slant wells, which the report describes as "angled wells drilled beneath the seafloor into seawater-saturated sediments," and would send brine out through an existing wastewater outfall.

The district wants to relocate the four not-yet-built wells because updated geotechnical data indicated the approved campground site "would not intersect sediments with the necessary depth, extent and permeability to reliably extract the volume of seawater needed" for the plant, the report says. Staff wrote that the day-use area would give the wells access to more suitable alluvial sediments and reliably supply the roughly 10 million gallons of seawater a day needed to hit the 5-million-gallon production target.

The trade-off falls on beachgoers. Construction inside the state beach is expected to run from November 2026 through November 2028, with work at the desalination facility site continuing to roughly December 2029. The relocated well work would take between 121 and 225 of the 694 available parking spaces, plus one of the grassy picnic areas. At least 121 spaces, including seven ADA-accessible spaces, would be off limits for the entire construction period; 208 would be restricted during pipeline microtunneling from February to September 2027, and 225 during peak pipeline work from July to September 2027.

To address the parking loss, staff added Special Condition 17, which requires the district to work with State Parks on a plan identifying where equivalent parking and access will be provided when demand exceeds the reduced lot. Because construction would overlap with the very strong El Niño conditions expected this winter, Special Condition 18 requires a Coastal Storm Contingency Plan covering stabilization of heavy equipment, flood protection for the site and securing materials against wave overtopping.

Once the work is finished, everything in the day-use area except an electrical building next to a new restroom would sit at or below grade, and staff concluded the project would not create permanent parking impacts. After the wells are built, the district would restore the grassy picnic area with new landscaping, picnic tables and barbecue areas.

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