Consortium wins bid for Rosarito desal plant

Baja California’s state government has selected a bidder for the construction of a massive desalination plant in Rosarito Beach that eventually could supply water to San Diego County.

The winning bid, announced last week, came from a consortium of two foreign companies — Nuwater of Singapore and the French company Degremont — as well as a Mexican company, NSC Agua, which is a subsidiary of Cayman Islands-based Consolidated Water.

The consortium “expects to finalize a definitive public-private partnership agreement with the state within the next 60 days,” according to an announcement by Consolidated.

The plan is to build a 100 million-gallon-a-day reverse osmosis facility in two phases, with the first 50 million-gallon-daily phase to be completed in 2019, and the second phase operational in 2024.

The plant would be situated near the Presidente Juarez thermoelectric plant in Rosarito Beach. At full buildout, it would be the largest desalination plan in the Western Hemisphere.

Under the agreement, the consortium would receive a 40-year concession to build and operate the plant, after which it would become the property of the state of Baja California.

The plant is envisioned as an important source of supply for the Tijuana-Rosarito Beach region. North of the border, the Otay Water District in San Diego County has expressed interest in purchasing some of the water once the project moves to its second phase, but any agreements on that front have yet to be negotiated.

Even as the consortium works out the details of its agreement with the Baja California, NSC Agua continues to fend off a legal challenge from a San Diego partner, Gough Thompson.

Thompson claims that his stake in NSC Agua was illegally reduced from 25 percent to 0.1 percent in 2012. But Rick McTaggart, president and CEO of Consolidated, said Thompson had been paid a settlement that released NSC Agua from future claims.

According to a filing made by Consolidated to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in May, the company is awaiting responses from courts in Mexico and the United States.

Thompson’s attorney, Roberto Vega, said the litigation is continuing, but declined further comment until a formal announcement on the winning bidder is published in the Periodico Oficial del Estado de Baja California, the state’s official journal.

sandra.dibble@sduniontribune.com