SQUIDFRY 08.10.17: Flaming Bag

FLAMING BAG… On the same day that President Donald Trump went from zero to nuclear in about five seconds in his warning to North Korea, over in Carmel, residents were squabbling at a near-nuclear level of intensity over dog poop and beach fires. (Squid wishes Squid were making both stories up.)

During a City Council meeting on Aug. 8, Lauren Banner, who organizes the Lovers of Carmel Beach cleanups for the Carmel Residents Association, told the council the group recently scooped up dog poop – 63 bags of it. For some reason, people scoop the poop, but then leave the full bags on the beach rather than throw them away in trash cans. Banner suggested neon-colored bags, making it harder for people to leave the bags unnoticed.

Next up was the beach fire debate. The council heard an update on a pilot program approved last year to allow a limited number of fires on Carmel Beach, but dozens of residents lined up for public comment and called for banning all fires outright. One speaker offered a particularly fierce comparison to a tradition that’s fallen out of favor: The Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China, she said, where 10,000 dogs and cats are killed for meat over 10 days. Um, beach barbecue, anyone?

PLOT TWIST… For the last month, Squid’s kept a countdown clock in the lair, ticking down the days until Cemex has to shut down its sand mining in Marina by the end of 2020. Finally, after being eroded for more than a century, the local coastline will begin its recovery.

But the shutdown of the sand mine, it turns out, may have another, unpredicted, consequence: It might make water from California American Water’s proposed slant wells – intended to be located just south of Cemex’s man-made dredge pond – so expensive as to be infeasible as the source for Cal Am’s proposed desalination plant.

Cal Am’s test well is under the beach in Marina, and as of June, is pumping about 84-percent saltwater and 16-percent freshwater – well below Cal Am’s 96-percent saltwater target. Cal Am can’t legally harvest fresh water, so a lower percentage of saltwater means Cal Am has to pump more of it to meet its production targets, which in turn means higher energy costs – and a higher cost of desalinated water.

Here’s the kicker: A recent study commissioned by Marina Coast Water District contends the Cemex dredge pond has the effect of artificially spiking the saltwater levels of the water Cal Am is pumping. And after 2020, that pond is gone.

If that’s true, that means Cal Am’s water source will get even less salty in the future, which would further drive up the cost of what is already of the most expensive water in America. Are we having fun yet?