Recurrent droughts and uncertainties about future water supplies
have led several California communities to look to saltwater for
supplemental supplies through a process known as desalination.
UN and partner water experts say it is time to increase the
tapping of Earth’s diverse and abundant unconventional water
sources – the millions of cubic kilometres of water in deep
land-based and seabed aquifers, in fog and icebergs, in the
ballast holds of thousands of ships, and elsewhere. A
new book, Unconventional Water Resources … says
these potential supplies can help many of the 1 in 4 people on
Earth who face shortages of water for drinking, sanitation,
agriculture and economic development.
Despite being surrounded by water, Bay Area residents are
routinely told during dry years to take shorter showers, let
lawns brown and slow the rush of water from their taps. But as
climate change prolongs drought and challenges local water
supply, regional water managers are warning that none of those
actions will be enough. Many say the time has come to invest in
technically feasible, though politically and environmentally
complicated alternatives like purifying wastewater and sucking
salt out of seawater to bolster stores.
Petaluma, one of the driest corners of Sonoma County during the
past two years of drought, is making a multimillion-dollar
advance into recycled water. Operator of a wastewater
treatment plant that serves about 65,000 people and treats
about 5 million gallons of effluent a day, Petaluma is seeking
grants for four projects with a total cost of $42
million. Six other North Bay agencies — including Sonoma
Water and the Sonoma Valley County Sanitation District — are
proposing a dozen projects totaling $41.2 million, bringing the
total to $83.2 million, as Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing water
reuse as an antidote to drought.
East County officials fear a $950 million sewage recycling
project could get flushed down the drain because of a pipeline
deal gone awry. Leaders spearheading the endeavor blame San
Diego Mayor Todd Gloria — who signed off on building an
eight-mile “brine line” as recently as last year but has since
reneged on that commitment. The pipeline would prevent
concentrated waste generated by the East County project’s
reverse osmosis filtration system from entering into the city’s
own $5 billion Pure Water sewage recycling project now under
construction.
A Thursday ruling by the California Coastal Commission denying
a Southern California desalination project appears as if it
could impact the prospects of California American Water Co.’s
plan to construct a desal plant along the Monterey Peninsula.
But Cal Am says the Commission’s decision to deny Poseidon
Water Co.’s Huntington Beach project and any impacts on Cal
Am’s long-proposed desal project on the Monterey Peninsula is
comparing apples to oranges.
After hearing hours of heated debate, the California Coastal
Commission voted against a controversial plan by the company
Poseidon Water to build a huge desalination plant in Huntington
Beach. Despite worsening drought and repeated calls from Gov.
Gavin Newsom to tap the Pacific Ocean as a source of drinking
water, commissioners voted unanimously against the plan
Thursday night. The decision, which was recommended by
commission staff, may end the company’s plans for the
$1.4-billion plant.
As California battles a historic drought and a water crisis
looms, the state’s coastline protection agency is poised to
vote Thursday on whether it will allow a $1.4 billion
desalinization plant in Huntington Beach that would convert
ocean water into municipal water for Orange County residents.
Poseidon Water, which has been trying to build the plant for
decades, says it would be capable of producing up to 50 million
gallons of drinking water a day, helping to make the region
more drought resilient. But desalination opponents argue less
expensive and less harmful conservation tactics should be the
first resort.
California officials are poised to decide the fate of a
controversial desalination plant planned along its southern
coast, in a vote that comes as the American west battles an
increasingly perilous drought. California water use leapt 19%
in March, amid one of the driest months on record. After more
than a decade of debate, the California coastal commission on
Thursday will finally vote on a proposal for a $1.4 bn
desalination plant in Huntington Beach, south of Los Angeles.
Poseidon Water, the company that runs the seawater desalination
facility in Carlsbad, is pushing to build another desalination
plant in Huntington Beach. … Recently a California
Coastal Commission staff report recommended that the project be
denied. The California-based ’Stop Poseidon’
coalition praised that recommendation, but on May 12th,
the commission will have a final vote, deciding if the company
will move forward with construction. The Coastal
Commission Public Hearing is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. Thursday,
in Costa Mesa.
Throughout the state, water agencies are telling Californians
that they must seriously curtail lawn watering and other water
uses. We can probably scrape through another dry year, but were
drought to persist, its impacts would likely be widespread and
permanent. … It didn’t have to be this way. We could
have built more storage to capture water during wet years, we
could have encouraged more conservation, we could have more
efficiently captured and treated wastewater for re-use and we
could have embraced desalination. -Written by Dan Walters, CalMatters
columnist.
[D]esalinization … draws in saltwater and, utilizing
reverse osmosis, purifies the water to a consumable standard.
Around the globe, countries have adopted desalinization as a
considerable part of their water portfolio. … California is
shockingly behind the curve when it comes to embracing the
practice. .. Rather than removing [Diablo Canyon Power
Plant] from the region, we should double down on
production and build an additional site to power a mega-sized
desalinization plant. -Written by Assemblymember Devon J. Mathis.
As North Orange County residents, we are concerned about our
future water supplies, and we hate seeing bad investments made
with public dollars — especially for private entities. While
North Orange County may not have the same drought burdens as
other communities across California — given our robust aquifer
— we know Brookfield-Poseidon’s proposed Huntington Beach Ocean
Desalination Project is not the answer to bringing new water
resources to our region. -Written by Kelly E. Rowe, an engineering
geologist, hydro-geologist and Orange County Water District
director; and Karl W. Seckel, water resources
engineer and a director of the Municipal Water District of
Orange County.
Kudos to Gov. Gavin Newsom for increasing his support for the
$1.4 billion Poseidon Water desalination in Huntington Beach.
… California is thirsty. And another drought is making us
thirstier. … Water authorities already are asking
Californians to cut down on shower times, watering lawns and
washing cars. Gov. Newsom’s “more tools in the tool kit”
approach is the right one.
New legislation that U.S. Reps. Mike Levin and Nancy Mace
introduced late last month could provide more grant funding to
the study and advancement of desalination technology,
benefiting endeavors including the proposed Doheny Ocean
Desalination Project in Dana Point. If enacted, H.R. 7612, or
the Desalination Research Advancement Act, would increase the
number of research grants the Bureau of Reclamation is
authorized to fund, raising the cap from $5 million to $20
million per year through the 2026 fiscal year.
When it comes to wasteful, overpriced and ill-considered
proposals to address California’s water supply issues, it’s
hard to know where to start. But a good place would be the plan
to build a desalination plant on the Pacific coast at
Huntington Beach. … As I’ve reported in the past,
there isn’t much to recommend the Huntington Beach project. It
would seriously damage the marine coastal environment, produce
the costliest water of any source available and raise water
bills for residents and businesses. -Written by Michael Hiltzik, LA Times business
columnist.
Marin County’s two largest water utilities are working to
narrow down what new sources of supply would provide the most
benefit in droughts. The North Marin Water District presented
findings of a study looking at how to bolster supplies for the
more than 60,000 residents it serves in its greater Novato
service area. The top scorers were projects to enhance the
storage at the district’s Stafford Lake reservoir. Other
options such as desalination, creating new reservoirs, dredging
the lake and a major recycled water expansion were deemed too
expensive or infeasible given the district’s size.
Citing California’s worsening drought conditions, Gov. Gavin
Newsom on Friday made a powerful new push for a controversial
$1.4 billion desalination plant on the state’s coastline. The
proposed oceanfront facility in Huntington Beach has been under
debate for more than 20 years, and its fate could set a course
for other desalination plants on the state’s coast. The
California Coastal Commission is scheduled to take a final vote
on the project in two weeks. … Newsom said a no
vote by the full commission to kill the project would be
“a big mistake, a big setback.”
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.
Growing up in Anaheim, the beach and the ocean served as a
place of solace for Orange County Coastkeeper Founder and
President Garry Brown, who created the nonprofit to help
protect the place he loves most. … In their mission to
protect water in Orange County, they’ve taken a stance on a
divisive issue affecting their community — whether the region
needs desalination, a costly, energy-intensive process that
uses reverse osmosis technology to remove salt from seawater to
make drinking water.
Would it surprise you to know that California could have all
the water anybody could want, but various government officials
refuse to take the actions that would provide it? Consider, for
example, the recent report by the staff of the California
Coastal Commission about the long-suffering proposal for a
desalination plant in Huntington Beach. The staff recommended
that the commissioners vote to kill the project. Poseidon
Water’s project was first proposed in 1998. -Written by Susan Shelley.
A proposed California desalination plant that would produce 50
million gallons of drinking water per day failed a crucial
regulatory hurdle on Monday, possibly dooming a project that
had been promoted as a partial solution for sustained drought.
The staff of the California Coastal Commission recommended
denying approval of the Huntington Beach plant proposed by
Poseidon Water … [and] said the project was more
susceptible to sea-level rise than was understood when it was
first proposed more than two decades ago.
The city council, Tuesday, April 19, approved amendment
agreement A-8332 with SPI (Separation Processes Inc) for the
Groundwater Desalter Improvement Project. THE approval executes
a first amendment to the agreement in the amount of $263,702
for a new contract not to exceed $1.064 million for additional
design work required for the groundwater desalter improvement
project. The deal also approves a $263,703 budget appropriation
transfer from the Water Appropriations to the Capital Water
Project.
Among the many complex arguments over water in California, one
particularly heated debate centers on whether the state should
seek more drinking water from a plentiful but expensive source:
the Pacific Ocean. The debate has reached a critical stage in
Huntington Beach, where Poseidon Water has been trying for more
than two decades to build one of the country’s largest
desalination plants. The California Coastal Commission is
scheduled to vote next month on whether to grant a permit to
build the plant.
A group of business interests that have been historic
cheerleaders for a Monterey Peninsula desalination project has
written a letter to officials at Pure Water Monterey, the
provider of potable recycled water along the Monterey
Peninsula, questioning the adequacy of source water for it and
a planned expansion of the project, questions Pure Water
Monterey says it has already answered. The Pure Water Monterey
project is key to helping solve the Peninsula’s chronic water
shortages as state regulators have significantly scaled back
the amount of water that can be pumped from the Carmel River.
This Friday marks Earth Day. This year the drought and
dwindling water supplies top the list of environmental
challenges here in the southwest. Scientists remain at odds
over Gov. Doug Ducey’s plan to help solve Arizona’s water
issues by desalinating water from the Sea of Cortez. Ducey
unveiled the idea in his State of the State address earlier
this year. He proposed a $1 billion project to draw treated
water to Morelos Dam near Yuma, but the challenges to the idea
remain difficult to solve.
The southern part of California’s Central Coast from San Luis Obispo County to Ventura County, home to about 1.5 million people, is blessed with a pleasing Mediterranean climate and a picturesque terrain. Yet while its unique geography abounds in beauty, the area perpetually struggles with drought.
Indeed, while the rest of California breathed a sigh of relief with the return of wet weather after the severe drought of 2012–2016, places such as Santa Barbara still grappled with dry conditions.
Even as stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin celebrate the recent completion of an unprecedented drought plan intended to stave off a crashing Lake Mead, there is little time to rest. An even larger hurdle lies ahead as they prepare to hammer out the next set of rules that could vastly reshape the river’s future.
Set to expire in 2026, the current guidelines for water deliveries and shortage sharing, launched in 2007 amid a multiyear drought, were designed to prevent disputes that could provoke conflict.
Although Santa Monica may be the most aggressive Southern California water provider to wean itself from imported supplies, it is hardly the only one looking to remake its water portfolio.
In Los Angeles, a city of about 4 million people, efforts are underway to dramatically slash purchases of imported water while boosting the amount from recycling, stormwater capture, groundwater cleanup and conservation. Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014 announced a plan to reduce the city’s purchase of imported water from Metropolitan Water District by one-half by 2025 and to provide one-half of the city’s supply from local sources by 2035. (The city considers its Eastern Sierra supplies as imported water.)
This 2-day, 1-night tour offered participants the opportunity to
learn about water issues affecting California’s scenic Central
Coast and efforts to solve some of the challenges of a region
struggling to be sustainable with limited local supplies that
have potential applications statewide.
This issue examines desalination and the role it could play in
the future of water supply. In addition to an explanation of the
basics of the technology, the article looks at costs,
environmental impacts and groundwater application. Pilot
desalination projects are featured, including a much-touted
Carlsbad, Calif., facility that promises to substantially boost
that region’s water supply.
This printed issue of Western Water examines
desalination – an issue that is marked by great optimism and
controversy – and the expected role it might play as an
alternative water supply strategy.
This printed issue of Western Water looks at the energy
requirements associated with water use and the means by which
state and local agencies are working to increase their knowledge
and improve the management of both resources.
This printed issue of Western Water features a
roundtable discussion with Anthony Saracino, a water resources
consultant; Martha Davis, executive manager of policy development
with the Inland Empire Utilities Agency and senior policy advisor
to the Delta Stewardship Council; Stuart Leavenworth, editorial
page editor of The Sacramento Bee and Ellen Hanak, co-director of
research and senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of
California.
This 25-minute documentary-style DVD, developed in partnership
with the California Department of Water Resources, provides an
excellent overview of climate change and how it is already
affecting California. The DVD also explains what scientists
anticipate in the future related to sea level rise and
precipitation/runoff changes and explores the efforts that are
underway to plan and adapt to climate.
Salt. In a small amount, it’s a gift from nature. But any doctor
will tell you, if you take in too much salt, you’ll start to have
health problems. The same negative effect is happening to land in
the Central Valley. The problem scientists call “salinity” poses
a growing threat to our food supply, our drinking water quality
and our way of life. The problem of salt buildup and potential –
but costly – solutions are highlighted in this 2008 public
television documentary narrated by comedian Paul Rodriguez.
A 20-minute version of the 2008 public television documentary
Salt of the Earth: Salinity in California’s Central Valley. This
DVD is ideal for showing at community forums and speaking
engagements to help the public understand the complex issues
surrounding the problem of salt build up in the Central Valley
potential – but costly – solutions. Narrated by comedian Paul
Rodriquez.
20-minute DVD that explains the problem with polluted stormwater,
and steps that can be taken to help prevent such pollution and
turn what is often viewed as a “nuisance” into a water resource
through various activities.
Many Californians don’t realize that when they turn on the
faucet, the water that flows out could come from a source close
to home or one hundreds of miles away. Most people take their
water for granted; not thinking about the elaborate systems and
testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state. Where drinking water comes from,
how it’s treated, and what people can do to protect its quality
are highlighted in this 2007 PBS documentary narrated by actress
Wendie Malick.
A 30-minute version of the 2007 PBS documentary Drinking Water:
Quenching the Public Thirst. This DVD is ideal for showing at
community forums and speaking engagements to help the public
understand the complex issues surrounding the elaborate systems
and testing that go into delivering clean, plentiful water to
households throughout the state.
The 24-page Layperson’s Guide to Integrated Regional Water
Management (IRWM) is an in-depth, easy-to-understand publication
that provides background information on the principles of IRWM,
its funding history and how it differs from the traditional water
management approach.
As the state’s population continues to grow and traditional water
supplies grow tighter, there is increased interest in reusing
treated wastewater for a variety of activities, including
irrigation of crops, parks and golf courses, groundwater recharge
and industrial uses.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta always has been at the mercy of
river flows and brackish tides.
Before human intervention, salty ocean water from the San
Francisco Bay flooded the vast Delta marshes during dry summers
when mountain runoff ebbed. Then, during winter, heavy runoff
from the mountains repelled sea water intrusion.
Recurrent droughts and uncertainties about future water supplies
have led several California communities to look to treat salty
water for supplemental supplies through a process known as
desalination.
Desalination removes salt and other dissolved minerals from water
and is one method to reclaim water for other uses. This can occur
with ocean water along the coast and in the interior at spots
that draw from ancient salt water deep under the surface or where
groundwater has been tainted
by too much salt.
It seems not a matter of if but when seawater desalination will
fulfill the promise of providing parts of California with a
reliable, drought-proof source of water. With a continuing
drought and uncertain water deliveries, the state is in the grip
of a full-on water crisis, and there are many people who see
desalination as a way to provide some relief to areas struggling
to maintain an adequate water supply.
“Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” – Samuel
Taylor Coleridge
For time immemorial, the seas of the Earth have been seen as an
enticing but unreachable source of fresh water. Separating the
salt from ocean water was always a cost prohibitive process,
primarily reserved to wealthy Middle Eastern nations and
small-scale operations such as ocean-bound vessels and small
islands. Otherwise, through the evolution of modern civilization,
man has depended upon lakes, rivers and groundwater – a supply
that comprises less than 3 percent of the planet’s total water.
