Amid a lengthening drought comes hopeful news: If the California Coastal Commission approves an essential permit for the Carlsbad desalination plant in August, in October Poseidon Resources could prepare to start construction.

But the commission's staff has been clever at raising obstacles to the project in a clear effort to delay it to death. Then again, the commissioners are aware of that effort. One has even warned against the shameful "poison pills" that the staff has been known to insert in the official record for one reason: to give environmental activists grounds to file suit and delay permitted projects.

Most recently exceeding its authority and common sense, the staff pushed the notion that Poseidon, which pledges a zero carbon footprint, should offset all carbon emissions from the production of the electricity that the desalination plant would use. By law, that's the power producer's duty, not Poseidon's.

In addition, the established formula for figuring acreage for Poseidon's wetlands mitigation fell far short of the acreage preferred by the commission's staff. So the staff refigured until it arrived at acreage it considered adequate.

In a most imaginative gouge earlier this year, Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas informed Poseidon that he didn't have the staff to vet company documentation or the funds to hire outside experts. With construction costs rising daily, Poseidon officials had little choice but to pick up the $145,280 tab.

However opposed the staff is, most commissioners surely realize that the desalination plant is as important as conservation, recycled water, reservoirs, etc. It would produce potable water at a reasonable cost. And contrary to some environmentalists' claims, it would have only an insignificant impact on sea life.

Some environmentalists' preference that the natural world remain largely unsullied by humans is based on an ill-founded conviction that growth in human habitat is anti-nature. Yet nature and humankind have adapted to change over eons. It's past time that environmentalists quit pitting one against the other. It's past time that coastal commissioners tell them to stop.