Latest News

"My family worked all day to be able to eat at night," he said.

At a temple fair in their village, there was a small ring for muay Thai fights. Like many Isan men, Somluck's father had been a fighter when he was young.

"My father put me in the ring, but I didn't want to do it," said Somluck, who was 7 or 8 at the time. "He hit me, so I had to fight."

He won money, a trophy and his first fans. When Somluck walked around the village, people complimented his skill.

"I had a natural talent," he said through an interpreter. "A gift from heaven."

Local notice led to regional fame for the charismatic Somluck.

"I was a bet hunter," he said. "I'd go from village to village fighting to earn money."

Muay Thai is sustained by gamblers, who contribute to the atmosphere at matches but are more concerned with results than artistry. For others, muay Thai is a spectacle, and for a select few like Somluck, it is a way to a better life.

When he reached 15 and the minimum fighting weight, 100 pounds, he made his debut at the prestigious Lumpini Stadium here. As usual, the second and third tiers of the stadium, which holds 9,500 spectators, were full of bettors wiggling their raised fingers throughout the fights, indicating the changing odds of wagers among themselves.

Muay Thai, a sport closely linked to kickboxing that was adapted from hand-to-hand combat, is as known for intricate rituals like the prefight dance wai kru ram muay as for devastating elbow and knee strikes.

"Such a mixture of gentleness and violence is characteristic of the Thai people and their culture," the Thai poet Montri Umavijani wrote.

Virat Vacirarattanawong, a Lumpini Stadium promoter, remembered watching the 15-year-old Somluck. "He was shining," he said through an interpreter. "He had a kind of glamour about him. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that he was not an ordinary boy."

Thai fighters compete so frequently that they are usually considered veterans by age 27. But Kamsing, now 40, returned to the ring last fall and won. On Saturday, an American audience will get a chance to take the measure of Somluck when he faces Chike Lindsay in Pomona, Calif.

By the time Somluck was 18, he had competed in more than 200 bouts. Despite his ability, he never became a champion at Lumpini or at the smaller Rajadamnern Stadium, the nation's other storied muay Thai arena. Somluck was considered such a prohibitive favorite that the big gamblers lost interest and the promoters did not want to risk their best prospects against him.

"I was out of a job," he said. "I could not support myself."

So Somluck switched to amateur boxing by refining the four striking tools of muay Thai — fists, feet, elbows and knees — into one. He approached matches the way he always did: before each fight, he paid respect to his amulet, which he believes protects him, and thought about his deceased father.

"The most important thing is I trust in myself," he said. "I am a boxer. I have to believe that I can beat my opponent. For some of them I have to train, for some don't. It is easy for me to read fighters."

He was a success as a featherweight boxer. At 19, Somluck represented Thailand at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and he won his nation's first Olympic gold medal four years later. Some may remember Somluck as the boxer who bowed to each compass direction before his bouts at the 1996 Atlanta Games. In the final, he outpunched the Bulgarian Serafim Todorov, who had beaten 19-year-old Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the semifinals.

Somluck, then 23, returned from the Olympics a national hero. He had an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej. He received more than $1 million in bonuses from the government and his sponsors. "My life went from the earth to the stars," he said. "I was famous. I was able to do advertising, movies, music, you name it. Everything changed."

Somluck is the Muhammad Ali of Thailand, but few people outside his homeland saw his movies, "Born to Fight" (2004) and "Soi Cowboy" (2008), or his debut as a singer in 2006. His appearances in the ring decreased as his celebrity increased, but he has defeated foreigners in sporadic muay Thai matches. Somluck has continued to box, losing to the American Rocky Juarez in the quarterfinals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and falling in the first round at the 2004 Games in Athens. In the early 2000s, he opened a muay Thai gym in Bangkok.

Muay Thai's popularity has grown with recent international competitions like Thai Fight and Best of Siam, and in mixed martial arts organizations like the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the K1 circuit, with their corner girls, light shows and fireworks.

But Thais under 30 are increasingly more interested in English Premier League soccer than their national sport. Widespread mobile phone use has enabled gamblers to bet on muay Thai fights remotely, and attendance at Lumpini and Rajadamnern has fallen.

Somluck noticed other changes in the sport.

"Referees score fights differently these days," he said. "A boxer can have the better kicks but lose because he gets thrown down in the clinch. Fighters don't use classical muay Thai anymore; they spend most of the time clinching like wrestlers. It's made people bored of watching the fights. The art is gone. If people want to see real art muay Thai now, it's better to watch foreigners."

Techniques that were once part of Somluck's repertory — the spinning back kick, known as the crocodile tail whip, and the elbow smash to the thigh, or breaking the elephant's trunk — are now rarely seen in Thai stadiums.

"They are battlefield techniques, really, but they are seen as a bit showy nowadays," said Rob Cox, a fight photographer and muay Thai gym owner. "The gamblers don't like it if a fighter does them too much. They place more importance on solid, heavy kicks; strong knees; throwing someone down in the clinch."

Gambling has been a driving force throughout Somluck's life. He called himself a "passionate gambler" who bets "especially when I fight."

Last September, he placed an undisclosed bet on a fighter from his gym, Jaisoo Thor Thepsutin, who was knocked out inside a minute. When Somluck announced his return to the Rajadamnern ring after an absence of about 18 years, many suspected a financial motivation.

"Money wasn't really the reason," he said. "I just wanted to promote muay Thai, and I thought it would be fun to fight in the big stadiums again."

Although Somluck stopped his 51-year-old opponent, Yodwanpadet Suwanwichit, the fight's pace was slow, and it was difficult to gauge the level of his skills. But Rajadamnern had sold out for the first time in more than 15 years, and Somluck received a deal for six more fights.

"People who did not have a chance to watch Somluck fight during the Olympics are keen to see his real ability," the promoter Sumeth Suesattabangkoch said through an interpreter. "They want to know whether his talent is worth his fame."

Last October, Somluck was embarrassed by Jomhod Kiatadisak, 42, who had won Lumpini and Rajadamnern championships and 15 world titles in his heyday. Before they met, Somluck told reporters that he had been sick and unable to train; not everyone believed him. Somluck faded quickly after the second round and was gasping for air in the fifth and final round, staggering on jelly legs. But he had sold out Lumpini Stadium.

For their February rematch, Rajadamnern also sold out. Outside the arena, vendors sold T-shirts, food and cigarettes amid panhandlers. Inside, the air was heavy with camphor and menthol from the fighters' liniment.

During their wai kru ram muay dance, Somluck and Jomhod circled the ring's perimeter. They whispered incantations into each corner, marking a boundary to keep out evil spirits.

At the end of the third round, Somluck was cut, but not badly, and had landed the more decisive blows. His swagger returned. He grinned in victory and raised his fist toward the gamblers in the third tier. They chanted his name, drowning out the ethereal sounds of the Javanese oboe, the cymbals and the drum that followed the rhythms of the fight.

Somluck soaked in the adulation, alone on the canvas with a golden chalice holding bundles of cash. Then he was hoisted onto his team's shoulders and carried out of the ring.

Mr. Liu's forceful critique of the federal agents looking into the legality of his donations, unprompted by a moderator or his rivals, captured his mounting frustration with an investigation that has cast a shadow over his fledgling campaign.

"Despite my record and despite my vision for the city, which I think is the right vision, there are still whispers about this cloud hanging over my head," Mr. Liu said in his closing statement at the forum, focused on poverty and income inequality.

His voice rising in anger, Mr. Liu listed his grievances: "Three years of investigating. They wiretapped my phones for 18 months. They reviewed a million documents and messages. They interrogated thousands of my supporters. And yet, what do they have to show for it? It's time to put up or shut up already. Because I have an election to win!"

The investigation dates back to 2009 and has resulted in the arrest of two associates — Mr. Liu's former 2013 campaign treasurer and a fund-raiser. Both are accused of conspiring to illegally funnel campaign contributions to Mr. Liu through "straw donors," or people whose contributions are reimbursed by others. Their trial is set to begin on April 15.

Mr. Liu has not been accused of wrongdoing, but documents and interviews have raised unflattering questions about his management style and integrity.

His decision to raise arguably his biggest political liability at a forum focused on issues like the minimum wage clearly caught his rivals by surprise.

"I was shocked," Tom Allon, a Republican candidate, said in an interview afterward. He compared Mr. Liu's sentiment to a dare.

"Catch me if you can," Mr. Allon said.

Mr. Liu's remarks, which drew loud applause from a crowd that seemed to be filled with his supporters, capped a lively and at times raucous forum at the First Corinthian Baptist Church in Harlem.

The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, the perceived front-runner in the race, endured pointed and bipartisan barbs about her unwillingness to allow for a vote on paid sick leave and her fund-raising ties to developers.

Both Bill de Blasio, the city's public advocate and a Democratic mayoral candidate, and Mr. Allon demanded that Ms. Quinn reverse her position on legislation that would require many employers to provide paid sick leave to workers across the city. Ms. Quinn, who has kept the legislation from reaching the floor of the Council, has argued that such a requirement would hurt small businesses at a time when the economy is fragile.

"You have to give us a vote," Mr. de Blasio told Ms. Quinn.

Mr. Liu joined in on the jabbing. "There is no conclusive research," he said of Ms. Quinn's argument, "that paid sick leave is actually detrimental to the economy."

At one point, the moderator of the forum, Brian Lehrer, asked whether there was anyone on stage besides Ms. Quinn who opposed paid sick leave now. No one raised their hand.

Ms. Quinn said she was carefully studying when the city might be ready for such a measure, which she supports in theory. But when Mr. Lehrer asked her which specific economic metric she would use to determine the right time, she replied, "We are evaluating that; I can't tell you that there is one."

All but one of the candidates said that New York should follow President Obama's plan to raise the minimum wage to $9 an hour. Mr. Liu, to ferocious applause, called for the state to raise the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour over the next few years, over the current $7.25.

Two major Republican candidates, Joseph J. Lhota and John Catsimatidis, did not attend, a fact that Mr. Lehrer noted.

The night was filled with unexpected glimpses into the candidates' personal lives. William C. Thompson Jr., the Democratic mayoral nominee in 2009 and a candidate again this year, recalled warning his 15-year-old stepson how to react if he were stopped and frisked by the police.

"If I am not doing anything wrong," Mr. Thompson recalled the boy asking, "why would I be stopped?" Mr. Thompson said that the police tactic "has been misused and abused."

Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, had vetoed the 20-week limit on Tuesday, saying it was likely to be found unconstitutional, but the newly Republican-controlled Senate voted to override Mr. Beebe's veto on Thursday; the House had already done so Wednesday. The measure is set to take effect immediately.

Arkansas is the 10th state to outlaw abortions after 20 weeks, in part based on the theory that fetuses can feel pain at that stage, a notion disputed by mainstream medical associations.

The 20-week limit also violates the legal threshold set by the Supreme Court, which has held that states cannot ban abortions before the fetus becomes viable. Such a limit has not yet been tested by the courts.

Doctors say viability, the ability to survive outside the womb, usually occurs after at least 24 weeks.

"We're seeing a real defiance of what the Supreme Court has held," said Elizabeth Nash, the state issues manager with the Guttmacher Institute, a research group in Washington. "The Supreme Court says viability is determined by a doctor."

Jason Rapert, an Arkansas state senator who sponsored the 12-week limit, says the Supreme Court provides too little guidance on determining viability, but that a heartbeat is an early sign of life. His goal is to prevent what he described as "abortion being used as birth control."

"When there is a heartbeat, there is life," Mr. Rapert said. "We do not need to be killing little babies."

The 12-week limit, which Governor Beebe is also expected to veto if it reaches him, would be an even greater challenge to existing constitutional standards.

The bill, which passed 26 to 8, includes exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies.

In a statement, Mr. Beebe said he had not made a decision on the 12-week ban but accepted the Legislature's override of his earlier veto.

"This is the Legislature's prerogative," he said. "It's part of the process, and we all know that. They did what they thought they should do and I did what I thought I should do."

Nine other states have passed 20-week limits since 2010, when Nebraska became the first. In two states, Georgia and Arizona, the laws were blocked by legal challenges.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said it will challenge both of Arkansas's laws. A Planned Parenthood statement called the 12-week ban "blatantly unconstitutional" and "a brazen affront to the needs of women."

Many states, especially in the South, are weighing efforts to limit abortions. In Alabama, the Legislature will vote next week on tighter regulations for abortion clinics. In Mississippi, the state's only abortion clinic is battling new regulations that its leader says could force it to close.

Last year, states across the country passed 43 bills restricting access to an abortion — the second-highest number of such measures ever passed in a single year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks.

Hours later, employees at the Environmental Protection Agency will open e-mails notifying them of the bad news: a forced furlough of up to 13 days in the weeks ahead.

And over at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, officials will spend the weekend mailing out letters to governors in all 50 states showing how much their grants will be reduced in the coming days and weeks.

Created by desperate politicians in Washington to force themselves to find a smarter way to cut government, the "sequester" will instead become the law of the land as a result of a failure of Mr. Obama and congressional Republicans to compromise.

But the law does not create an immediate spending crisis or government shutdown like the ones that have loomed over so many of the previous budget fights in Washington. On Friday, the immediate impact on most Americans will be exactly nothing.

Federally funded day care programs will continue to operate. National parks will stay open. Government employees will continue to report to work. Border patrol agents will do their best to prevent illegal crossings. Experts do not expect the stock market to flinch.

It will be, Mr. Obama said Wednesday night, more of a "tumble downward" than a quick descent into budgetary nightmare. "It's conceivable that in the first week, the first two weeks, the first three weeks, the first month, a lot of people may not notice the full impact of the sequester," Mr. Obama told a group of business officials.

That might not be entirely true, as Mr. Obama noted, for some pockets of American society: companies who do business directly with the Defense Department, families who live near military installations and parents who rely on federally funded child care will be affected. Federal workers may soon face effective cuts of 10 percent or more in their salaries this year.

But even there, officials conceded this week, the specific impacts are more fuzzy than the aggregate ones. Ask officials about which contracts will be cut or which services will be trimmed back, and there are long pauses and blank looks.

"The impacts of sequester are real," Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said again and again to reporters on Thursday. "These are about real issues. These are about the concrete effects of policies on people's lives."

But who? Which agencies? What contracts?

Under the barrage of questions, Mr. Carney managed to come up with reduced funding for school children in Ohio.

But which children? Those who live in Columbus or Cincinnati? Officials at the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and the Education Department cannot answer with that kind of specificity.

White House officials become indignant with suggestions that Mr. Obama and his top lieutenants might have hyped the devastation wrought by the automatic cuts. At his briefing, Mr. Carney insisted that the administration had been transparent.

"You know, we've been very clear," he said. "What the president said last night is that — you know, and I think what other people have said — is that this will be a rolling impact, an effect that will build and build and build."

Strategists in the West Wing are betting that the growing impact of the budget cuts — including what they expect will be a hit to the nation's already slow economic growth rate — will eventually bring Republicans to the table for a deal.

It may take some time. Even the most direct impact on federal workers — the forced furloughs — will not happen in most cases for 30 or 60 days, after government managers have concluded negotiations with the unions that represent workers.

A letter sent to employees at the Justice Department, for example, is filled with legalese. "This memorandum notifies you that the Department of Justice (DOJ) proposes to furlough you no earlier than 30 days from receipt of this notice," it said.

More letters like that are coming once Mr. Obama signs the letter making sequestration official.

And when, exactly, will that happen?

"It has to be done by 11:59 p.m. tomorrow," Mr. Carney told reporters, joking that it would be at "11:59 and 59 seconds, because he's ever hopeful."

A day earlier, Groupon reported weak fourth- quarter earnings, which caused investors to shave off a quarter of the Chicago company's value. The news about Mr. Mason, released after the market closed, sent shares up more than 4 percent in late trading.

In a note to Groupon employees that was typical of his sassy style, Mr. Mason wrote: "after four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding — I was fired today."

He added, "If you're wondering why ... you haven't been paying attention."

Groupon said in its earnings call that first-quarter revenue would be about 10 percent lower than analysts were expecting, among other disappointments.

Jordan Rohan, an analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus, said Mr. Mason's exit "was long overdue."

"I view Mason as a visionary idea generator," Mr. Rohan said. "Few would argue with how impressive the Groupon organization was as it grew. However, at some point it became the overgrown toddler of the Internet — operationally clumsy, not quite ready to make adult decisions."

Mr. Mason, who dodged a potential dismissal in November, will be temporarily replaced by Eric Lefkofsky, Groupon's executive chairman, and Theodore J. Leonsis, its vice chairman, while they search for a replacement.

Now 32, Mr. Mason had a wild ride. Unlike many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, he never seemed to dream about building a huge company or even becoming fantastically wealthy. Groupon was an outgrowth of a start-up, the Point, which was aimed at encouraging charitable actions by groups. In late 2008, Mr. Mason and a few colleagues reformulated it as a deals shop.

Over the years, Silicon Valley start-ups had tried many forms of deal sites, but Groupon was the first to really make it work, and did so instantly. The formula was simple and compelling. People were sent e-mails of offers for, say, a local restaurant. If they bought it, they got a bargain, Groupon got a commission and the restaurant won new patrons.

In two years, Mr. Mason was turning down a reported $6 billion offer from Google. As a reminder that fate is fickle, he put in the reception area of Groupon's offices a gallery of framed magazine covers featuring Napster, Myspace and other tech wunderkinds that ultimately faded. To these losers, he then added a cover that featured Groupon.

"Our marketing guy thought we should put some press on the wall, but I didn't want an atmosphere of popping the Champagne," Mr. Mason told Chicago Time Out in 2010. "We still have a mountain to climb, and other iconic companies will be a footnote in history."

Groupon's public offering, in late 2011, valued the company at $16.5 billion. It was the most talked-about tech debut between Google and Facebook. The actors, stand-up comics and other creative types who made up much of Groupon's early team watched in wonder. The company had a loose, informal style, with an editorial team as large as a midsize newspaper. Writers labored over the gags that introduced the deals. The one for a dentist started like this: "The Tooth Fairy is a burglarizing fetishist specializing in black-market ivory trade, and she must be stopped."

But then the competition intensified, the criticism began and the stock struggled. Groupon's market value is now $2.97 billion.

Groupon has 10,000 employees in 48 countries. Mr. Rohan, the analyst, said the new chief executive "will have to refocus the company on the most productive markets with the most productive sales people." He added, "Groupon needs to give up on the grand vision of becoming an operating system for local commerce and instead be the best daily deals provider it can be."

Even as the daily deals sites struggle financially — the No. 2 company, Amazon-backed LivingSocial, is in worse shape than Groupon — the number of digital coupon users in the United States continues to rise, according to eMarketer. An estimated 92.5 million Americans redeemed a digital coupon in 2012, up 4.9 percent from 88.2 million in 2011.

No surprise there, said Sucharita Mulpuru, an e-commerce analyst with Forrester Research. "Who doesn't like 50 percent off something? The question was always how you create good consistent deal flow from merchants."

She noted that in his letter, Mr. Mason talked about what was best for the customer. "They think their customer is Joe Smith who buys the Groupon," Ms. Mulpuru said. "But the customer is the merchant. They have been focusing on the wrong person."

Indeed, merchants got a lot of attention for complaining how successful deals came close to ruining them.

Mr. Mason's letter was in the blunt tech tradition of a former Yahoo chief executive, Carol Bartz, who sent an e-mail to the search engine's employees in September 2011 saying, "I've just been fired."

In his letter, Mr. Mason wrote: "I'm o.k. with having failed at this part of the journey. If Groupon was Battletoads, it would be like I made it all the way to the Terra Tubes without dying on my first-ever play-through." He added that he was looking for a good fat camp to lose the 40 pounds he had gained at Groupon.

Mr. Mason's letter was very well received on Twitter, with people applauding his honesty as much as his sense of humor.

Mr. Mason himself retweeted a comment that said: "First the pope and now Andrew Mason!?! Our esteemed leaders are falling like flies."

His feud with an unnamed official, first reported in Politico, which said Mr. Woodward clearly saw the administration's choice of words "as a veiled threat," initially drew cheers from many conservative commentators and bewilderment from many Washington reporters who wondered whether Mr. Woodward was being a tad oversensitive.

In an interview later on Thursday, Mr. Woodward emphasized that he had not said he felt threatened. "I never said it was a threat," he said, but added that he still had concerns about how the administration handled criticism. "We live in a world where they don't like to be challenged, particularly when the political stakes are so high," he said.

The dust-up started last Friday, when The Washington Post published an op-ed article by Mr. Woodward that said Mr. Obama was "moving the goal posts" by insisting that a substitute for the Congressionally mandated automatic spending cuts include new revenue. "That was not the deal he made" back in 2011, Mr. Woodward wrote.

The staff of the House speaker, John A. Boehner, circulated the article to reporters immediately. By Sunday, when the article appeared in print, the headline of Politico's widely read Playbook newsletter read "Woodward v. White House!"

On Wednesday Mr. Woodward attracted streams of new conservative friends when he said that an unnamed senior White House official had yelled at him "for about a half-hour" and warned that he would "regret this." After Politico published his comments under the headline "Woodward at War," Twitter lighted up with vigorous debate.

To some Republican politicians and conservative activists, Mr. Woodward's assertions were new evidence of their belief that the Obama administration exerts tremendous pressure on a mostly cowed news media. Representative Steve Stockman, Republican of Texas, said in a statement, "Even Bob Woodward accuses Obama of 'madness.' " The Fox News host Steve Doocy defended Mr. Woodward and said, "This White House is one of the most thin-skinned White Houses ever."

But in the worlds of politics and journalism, a consensus was forming around the suggestion — supported by people close to the White House — that Mr. Woodward had overreacted.

"Arguing with press aides and senior officials" might as well be part of the job description for White House correspondents.

"In fairness to the White House, the First Amendment applies to them as well," said Ed Henry, the chief White House correspondent for Fox News.

As reporters badgered the White House for comments about whether a threat had been conveyed, details about the discussion between Mr. Woodward and his source began to leak out. BuzzFeed reported that the official was Gene Sperling, the director of Mr. Obama's National Economic Council.

On Thursday morning Politico published their e-mail exchange, which seemed remarkably polite. Mr. Sperling started by saying: "I apologize for raising my voice in our conversation today. My bad." He later said "perhaps we will just not see eye to eye here" and "as a friend, I think you will regret staking that claim." Mr. Woodward responded: "You do not ever have to apologize to me. You get wound up because you are making your points and you believe them."

Mr. Woodward would not say whether this White House was more sensitive about being challenged than the past administrations he has covered. But he said, "I can't recall an instance when somebody in the White House said I was going to 'regret staking out' a position that they disagreed with, but were not that factually challenging."

Other veteran reporters said on Thursday, in essence, "We've heard worse." Major Garrett, the chief White House correspondent for CBS, said that he thought the flare-up was "a completely ridiculous story" and that conflict came with the White House beat. "Every reporter knows when a source is angry about something you're working on, you're on the right track," he said. "Just get on with it."

Jake Tapper, who recently joined CNN from ABC, where he covered the White House, recalled unpleasant conversations with both Republicans and Democrats and called it part of the job. "In my experience," he said, "neither side has had a premium on tones that may not be soothing, or words that may not be suitable for children."

Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University who studies presidential communications, said a truer measure of the relationship between the White House and the press corps was whether journalists were prevented from doing their jobs.

"People are not prevented from reporting," she said. "There's no enemies list. That's the threat that I would see, not a case of Gene Sperling writing the e-mail he did to Bob Woodward."

At the moment, the seawater is being diverted from the ocean to cool an aging natural-gas power plant. But in three years, if all goes as planned, the saltwater pulled in at that entryway will emerge as part of the regional water supply after treatment in what the project's developers call the newest and largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.

Large-scale ocean desalination, a technology that was part of President John F. Kennedy's vision of the future half a century ago, has stubbornly remained futuristic in North America, even as sizable plants have been installed in water-poor regions like the Middle East and Singapore.

The industry's hope is that the $1 billion Carlsbad plant, whose builders broke ground at the end of the year, will show that desalination is not an energy-sucking, environmentally damaging, expensive white elephant, as its critics contend, but a reliable, affordable technology, a basic item on the menu of water sources the country will need.

Proposals for more than a dozen other seawater desalination plants, including at least two as big as Carlsbad — one at Huntington Beach, 60 miles north of here, and one at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base — are pending along shorelines from the San Francisco Bay Area southward. Several of these are clustered on the midcoast around Monterey and Carmel.

The San Diego County Water Authority has agreed to buy at least 48,000 acre-feet of water from the plant each year for about $2,000 an acre-foot. An acre-foot equals about 326,000 gallons, roughly enough for two families of four for a year. The authority has made a long-term bet that those costs — now double those of the most readily available alternative — will eventually be competitive. But it still means the authority will pay more than $3 billion over 30 years for only about 7 percent of the county's water needs.

As Sandra Kerl, the deputy general manager of the authority, said in a recent interview, "There's a lot of eyes on this."

The technology used in the Carlsbad plant, known as reverse osmosis, was developed decades ago. It involves pushing the water through a series of microscopic sieves rolled up into larger cylindrical filters. The energy-intensive process separates pure water from both salt molecules and impurities. The filters, some of which are made locally, are cheaper and more durable than they were a decade ago, industry accounts say, bringing down the overall price of the plant and its operations.

In the Western United States, where the complexities of water law and heavily subsidized federal and state water projects have complicated the economics of water delivery and hamstrung any widespread development of water markets, the Carlsbad plant offers a peek into a future when water prices reflect the actual cost of procurement and delivery. David Moore, a managing director of Clean Energy Capital, financial advisers to the San Diego County authority, said the water authority had "made the call that over time this water is going to be more affordable than other sources. That was the fundamental risk of the transaction." The price of water the authority now gets from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is about $1,000 an acre-foot.

The bet on this technology was not an obvious one; the recent history of desalination in the United States and Australia has been mixed, at best. Some recently constructed Australian plants are flourishing while others stand idle some of the time. In this country, technological missteps, delays and bankruptcies dogged the first big plant, which finally opened in Tampa in 2007.

"Tampa was a buzz kill for the sector," Mr. Moore said.

So the Carlsbad plant is being watched not just for its performance or its effect on the local marine environment, but for its financial architecture.

Mr. Moore and other financial advisers are trying to make investors and bondholders comfortable with the technology by mimicking the financial approach of a merchant power plant — for instance, substituting a "water purchase agreement" for a "power purchase agreement," to show that Carlsbad's water has a guaranteed market.

The water purchase agreement was signed by the San Diego authority and the plant's developer, Poseidon Resources, of Stamford, Conn., in late November. Poseidon bears the responsibility for completing the plant and operating it; the authority does not pay for any water that is not delivered.

The project's costs are financed by two bond offerings totaling $734 million and a $189 million equity investment. In addition, the water authority is committing about $80 million to other capital needs. All of these arrangements have interlocking guarantees and risks, with the costs of constructing the plant borne by the project developers and the water authority responsible for constructing a 10-mile pipeline to send the water on its way to San Diego's taps.

The public water authority did not want its ratepayers to be responsible for paying for water that was never delivered; it will pay only for water that meets its standards and goes into its reservoirs. That said, when the water is flowing in 2016 the county must pay as much as $113 million annually, which could rise over time.

Late last year, this financial picture prompted Fitch Ratings to give the project's bond issue a BBB- rating, the lowest for investment grade debt. For Fitch executives, familiar with the unexpected obstacles in deployment of desalination technology, the water purchase agreement was a critical factor leading to a rating above junk level.

The cost comparison remains ugly for desalination right now, but the water agency has calculated that, given the history of annual rate increases from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the desalinated water could be cheaper than the current supply by 2024.

Then there is the question of reliability. Water supplied by the Southern California water district comes from Northern California transfers and Colorado River diversions. Climate change is likely to cut into both sources over time. And San Diego and the Southern California district have a history of antagonism; the Carlsbad plant, which would supply as much as 7 percent of the region's needs, is the most recent of several San Diego efforts at diversification.

But water policy experts and local environmental activists are skeptical about the value of desalination compared with conservation and reuse. They will be watching the plant from a very different perspective.

Heather Cooley, a senior research associate with the Pacific Research Institute, an Oakland-based nonprofit group specializing in water supply questions, said that even if the Carlsbad plant worked well, a new rush to desalination was hardly certain.

It depended, she said, on whether "water demand continues to grow, as was likely in the past, or whether, as we've seen in the past 15 years, it stays the same or even declines, based on efficiencies and conservation and the structure of the economy."

She added that by promising to buy at least 48 million gallons a day from the plant, the county water authority has less incentive to step up its push for water conservation, or to invest further in water reuse.

The environmental group the Surfrider Foundation, which has fought the Carlsbad plant at every turn, expects the plant to be an object lesson in how not to guard against water shortages. Among other things, the foundation emphasizes the energy needs of the plant, which will consume 5,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce an acre-foot of water.

As electricity costs go up over time, the county's water bill — already estimated to be $5 to $7 a month higher for each customer by 2016, thanks to Carlsbad — will rise in tandem.

But authority officials noted that water delivered from the Southern California district also required energy, and its cost, too, would go up in such circumstances.

The costs have been one focus of opponents.

"If the county had taken a holistic, practical approach to water management and water supply needs, it would never have done something so costly," said Belinda Smith, a member of Surfrider.

She and her colleagues see the surface water intake valve as the plant's Achilles' heel. The current state permit covering the intake's operations expires when the Encina natural gas power plant is no longer using cooling water. If the new permit required expensive changes — if, for instance, the entire intake had to be moved below the surface — the cost to ratepayers, and particularly to Poseidon, could increase significantly.

The county and the developers said this eventuality was covered in the financial planning.

But for the moment, Poseidon officials are energized by the prospect of beginning construction, after a decade of delays. Peter M. MacLaggan, a senior vice president at Poseidon, referred to the experience of the company's desalination technology partners when he said, "We're at desal 3.0 or 4.0 here at Carlsbad."

He added that the need for new water supplies could provide a ready market for the technology, if it is effective. "Water in California has been cheap and plentiful. And that's no longer the case," he said. In San Diego, he said, "We're facing it. The rest of California is facing it to different degrees. We're all challenged in finding new water supplies."