Essential California: As some cities face water restrictions, a desalination debate grows
California’s extreme drought over the last three years has been intensified by hotter temperatures, putting strains on the shrinking reserves in the state’s reservoirs. … Yet even as the northern third of the MWD’s vast service area faces unprecedented water restrictions, a different sort of struggle is underway in Orange County, where a company’s plan to build a large desalination plant is to face a critical vote next month before the California Coastal Commission.