Nestled along the picturesque Southern California coastline at Carlsbad, the complex of buildings that abut the Encina Power Station next to the Agua Hedionda Lagoon belies the significance of the annals of water supply in California.

After more than 10 years of develop­ment, the largest seawater desalina­tion facility in the Western Hemi­sphere formally launched in Decem­ber, desalting and then pumping out 50 million gallons of fresh water each day into San Diego’s local supply and prompting questions about the role seawater desalination will play in California’s future.

Read the excerpt below from the Winter 2016 issue written by Gary Pitzer along with the editor’s note from Jennifer Bowles. Click here to subscribe to Western Water and get full access via a digital or print publication.

Introduction

Nestled along the picturesque Southern California coastline at Carlsbad, the complex of buildings that abut the Encina Power Station next to the Agua Hedionda Lagoon belies the significance of the annals of water supply in California.

After more than 10 years of develop­ment, the largest seawater desalina­tion facility in the Western Hemi­sphere formally launched in Decem­ber, desalting and then pumping out 50 million gallons of fresh water each day into San Diego’s local supply and prompting questions about the role seawater desalination will play in California’s future.

Maureen Stapleton, general man­ager of the San Diego County Water Authority, has watched the develop­ment of desalination ever since it first appeared as a viable water sup­ply option in the wake of the drought of the early 1990s. She is glad to see Carlsbad finally come on line after a long road of legal and regulatory hurdles.

“I think it is a quality project,” she said. “It’s environmentally sensitive, it’s cost-effective and it had over­whelming community support. Our public polls had the vast majority of the region supporting this and a willingness to pay for it.”

In a state whipsawed by drought, floods and an increasingly unpredict­able water delivery system, the appeal of seawater desalination has grown as a worthwhile endeavor. But the ocean is anything but a vast reservoir of free water for the taking. It takes a lot of work, money and electricity to make seawater suitable for human consumption. There also are con­cerns that the impacts to the ocean environment aren’t fully known.

The California Department of Water Resources (DWR) “is opti­mistic that seawater desalination will play an increasing role in California’s water resources,” said Diana Brooks, chief of DWR’s Water Resources’ Wa­ter Use and Efficiency Branch within the Division of Statewide Integrated Water Management.

“Stresses on freshwater surface supplies and groundwater are driving forces to increase water conservation and diversify water supplies,” she said. “The state recognizes that desal­ination is an important water supply alternative and, where economically, socially and environmentally appro­priate, should be part of a balanced water supply portfolio for California that includes other alternatives, such as conservation and water recycling.”

Several sites along the coast have been identified for seawater desalina­tion – including many in Southern California. For its member agencies, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), the largest supplier of treated water in the United States, offers a subsidy of up to $340 per acre-foot. (MWD is not currently subsidizing the Carlsbad plant because of a lawsuit filed by San Diego County Water Authority challenging MWD’s method of collecting funds to pay for its local project subsidies.) MWD General Manager Jeff Kightlinger said in an email that while ocean desalination remains “a relatively small part” of the state’s overall water supply picture, there are commu­nities where desalination “makes perfect sense.”

Santa Barbara, San Diego, Monterey, south Orange County, Santa Barbara and perhaps a few others are examples of areas without groundwater and would be vulnerable in event of an earthquake cutting off their access to imported water. Though expensive, desal is a good diversification hedge for those areas,” he wrote.

At Huntington Beach in Orange County, Poseidon Water, which built the Carlsbad plant, is proposing a $900 million facility situated next to an existing power plant that has an open ocean intake pipe. The water would be sold to the Orange County Water District (OCWD), which is deciding whether to enter into a long-term agreement with Poseidon.

Cathy Green, president of the district’s Board of Directors, said de­salinated water would be a welcome addition to existing supplies, which include the 100 million gallons per day Groundwater Replenishment System, an indirect potable reuse project.

“It’s fresh local water that is not subject to regulations or drought or any of the other problems that we are looking at now,” she said.

Desalination got a big boost last year when the California State Water Resources Control Board (State Wa­ter Board) amended its Ocean Plan to specifically address the environ­mental aspect of desalination. Setting the standards was an important milestone for desalination, said Ron Davis, executive director of CalDesal, an advocacy group.

“When you take a look at 2015, it will be a seminal year for ocean desal because you had the rules ap­proved by the State Water Board that provide everybody with a process for meeting one of the permits and then you had the operational startup for the Carlsbad project,” he said.

Up the coast in Santa Barbara, the city’s old desalination plant is being rehabilitated for a scheduled re-launch in October. The plant was originally built during the 1987-1992 drought and was operated for only three months in 1992 before being taken off line as the drought ended. Spending $55 million to renovate the plant was heavily influenced by the current drought, said Joshua Haggmark, water resources manager, but its utility extends further.

“The decision to reactivate the facility is to address the current drought, but once this drought ends we will once again revisit the role of desal in meeting the city’s water needs going forward,” he said. “The severity of this drought has really been a game changer and a paradigm shift in water supply planning.”

Proponents of desalination say it is a necessary pursuit to help com­munities diversify their water supply portfolios.

“I would argue that it’s a busi­ness decision to try and make sure you are meeting your water supply demands, recognizing reality,” said Davis. “Irrespective of what anybody is trying to say or argue, the state of California is growing and water managers have worked miracles meeting water supply demands using waters supply options that were developed in the last century.”

Critics say it is erroneous to pursue desalination in the depths of a drought because “it puts you in the position that when the drought ends you may not need that water anymore,” said Heather Cooley, director of the Pacific Institute’s water program.

“Ratepayers continue to pay for those plants while receiving only minimal benefit,” she said. “In theory, the shuttered plants could be activated if needed, so they act as a sort of insurance policy, albeit a very expensive one.”

Peter MacLaggan, vice presi­dent with Poseidon, acknowledged the water San Diego receives from desalination at about $2,200 per acre-foot is about twice the cost of the region’s imported supply but he said sometime between 2025 and 2042 “the expectation is those two numbers will be at parity.

“The added cost is essentially a reliability premium that decreases each year and is reduced to zero prior to the end of the 30-year agree­ment,” he said.

Whether imported water and de­salinated water reach parity remains to be seen. Currently, MWD charges about $1,000 an acre foot for the water it imports from the State Water Project and the Colorado River. The most recent rate projection from MWD has 4 percent annual increases in 2017 and 2018 then 4.5 percent annual increases for the remaining eight years. Energy costs could play a big role in the future cost of desali­nated water.

There are a number of factors that will impact the future cost of imported water, said Celeste Cantú, general manager of the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority. “2050 is a long time from now, but assuming our understanding of climate change is accurate, we will see drier and warmer weather continue. Water will be free, water service in current year dollars, and location will go from $2-4 to $10 a unit, or 742 gallons.” Water is typically measured in acre feet; two households currently use 1 acre foot – 325,851 gallons – per year.

At the federal level, desalination is part of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s 2016 drought bill, with 27 identi­fied projects – for seawater along the coast and brackish groundwater inland – for funding. Projects named in the bill are from the 2013 California Water Plan and include the Huntington Beach and Mon­terey proposed seawater desalina­tion facilities as well as facilities in Long Beach and Oceanside. Brack­ish desalting projects also are listed including Chino Basin Desalter 3, the Perris II Desalter and the West Simi Valley Desalter. The bill would reauthorize the Desalination Act, which funds $100 million to Interior to improve reverse osmosis and membrane technology.

“Projects to … create new water through recycling and desalina­tion have fallen woefully behind,” Feinstein said in a statement Feb. 10. “Investments in these vital projects have lagged, which means communi­ties and businesses throughout the state have felt the water pinch.”

By Gary Pitzer

Editor’s Note: California’s Coast Only Part of the Picture

Often times on my Facebook feed, someone will post a map of California sitting beside a huge ocean with the word, “Duh,” scrawled across the water. The idea that California can dig itself out of the drought simply by building desalination plants up and down the coast may, at first glance, seem like an obvious choice.

But if you look deeper you will see that it’s not realistic. To build enough desal plants to quench the state’s thirst, we’d have to build a lot of plants. For a state where the residents love their coastline, that might be a stretch. Secondly, there are drawbacks to ocean desal, including environmental impacts on marine life and the amount of energy and money it takes to run the plants. And, important to note, a desal plant can only generate so much fresh water at a time.

But it is certainly a technology worth investing in some places as a supplemental supply. The idea to look deep into this topic and its realistic future in California came with the much-anticipated opening of the desalination plant in Carlsbad in December. We will be visiting that plant during our San Diego tour on May 19-20. Check out www.watereducation.org/general-tours for more information and to sign up.

As you flip through the pages of this issue of Western Water, you will notice it looks a bit different. We have revamped the magazine for 2016 as we transform it to a quarterly publication. We’ve included profiles on alums of our popular Water Leaders program so we can see where they’ve gone in their careers and what they learned while they were with us. And we’ve added a “sense of place” highlighting places key to California water – some well-known, others more obscure but just as important.

In 1979, Rita Schmidt Sudman, the Foundation’s former executive director, wrote her first article for Western Water called “Battle for Waters of Mono Lake.” After years of observing the California water scene, Sudman found she had more to say after she left the Foundation in 2014. She has recently coauthored a new book, Water: More or Less, with artist and essayist Stephanie Taylor. The book captures historic water conflicts, moments of change and offers solutions for the future. Twenty diverse top water policy leaders, including yours truly, also add their voices by contributing personal thoughts and answers for the future.

You can buy autographed copies on the Foundation website at www.water education.org/other-publications.

Enjoy our revamped magazine and let us know if you like it.

– Jennifer Bowles