Plastic bags only the most recent bid for Mad’s water

Eureka Times-Standard

Plastic bags only the most recent bid for Mad’s water

By John Driscoll The Times-Standard

Thursday, January 16, 2003 – 7:12:33 AM MST

In the past few years, the Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District has turned away a number of efforts to ship water from its Mad River source to points south.

Now the district again is considering such a proposal, from one of those who began to show interest in shipping water by tanker three years ago. Ric Davidge, of the Alaska-based Aqueous Corp., has changed his concept to hauling the water in huge ocean-going fiberpoly bags, but his aim is the same.

In 1999, a series of water district board meetings addressed several bids to ship water to San Diego, spurred by the city’s interest in buying water at high rates at the time. One of those was by Northcoast Environmental Water, formed by Eureka brain surgeon Denver Nelson and former Eureka City Councilman Jack McKellar. The proposal to tank water south was taken under advisement, but was later withdrawn.

Los Angeles-based Natural Resources Corp. President John Barbieri also prodded the water district, legislators and the Simpson Paper Co. — which previously bought tens of millions of gallons each year for its former Samoa Peninsula pulp mill — to consider such an idea.

Entrepreneur Terry Spragg — who years earlier wanted to solve Santa Barbara’s water crisis by towing an iceberg to the city from Antarctica — also wanted to bag Mad River water and tow it to Monterey.

Ric Davidge also expressed similar interest at the time. Davidge later tried unsuccessfully to tap the Gualala and Albion rivers.

But these people never submitted a formal proposal to the water district board, and in one way or another, their projects failed to materialize.

“They ranged from pie in the sky … to someone really studying it,” said Carol Rische, the water district’s general manager.

The most thorough proposal came from Global Water Corp., which proposed to ship water to San Diego in tankers that can carry more than 130 million gallons. The Canadian company in 1999 signed an agreement with the Alaskan community of Sitka to export 5 billion gallons of glacier water to China.

But Global Water apparently wanted a quick Humboldt Bay water district decision, and the board and former general manager Art Bolli thought better of rushing into such an agreement.

Davidge is now before the board with a proposal to ship up to 20,000 acre feet of water per year — probably an optimistic figure — to Monterey or other communities. His bags carry about 46.5 acre feet — or 15 million gallons — not the 91 acre feet derived from the bags’ dimensions and earlier reported.

The water would be pumped from Samoa Peninsula connections to bags in the bay, which would likely require some new infrastructure. To move, conservatively, 15,000 acre feet, Aqueous Corp. would have to make 323 trips from Humboldt Bay.

Moving water outside the district’s boundaries is complicated from technical and legal perspectives. The water district may have to amend its water rights for the water to be used outside the district.

“If they want to change the purpose, place of use or point of diversion, they would have to petition the state board to change the water rights to reflect the proposed use of the water,” said Ernie Mona, a water resources control engineer for the State Water Resources Control Board.

The water district will meet with interested groups and the press on Friday to give details of Davidge’s proposal.

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