Water woes prompt California to rethink desalination

Threats of a drought later this year in California are prompting water agencies to look at desalination for a routine source of water instead of as an emergency measure in California.

The water agencies are faced with a four-fold threat this year: worsening drought, dwindling species of freshwater fish, crumbling plumbing systems and unyielding demand, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

But water agencies across the U.S. have typically shied away from desalination because of complaints about its energy use and environmental impacts. Although the U.S. is the source of much of today's membrane technology, the country has lagged in the number of facilities actually converting saltwater into drinking water. At the end of 2007, there were more than 13,080 desalination plants worldwide, but just 119 in the U.S., according to the International Desalination Association.

The changing climate for desalination could be good news for companies such as San Leandro, Calif.-based Energy Recovery, a desalination company founded in 1992 with the aim of making seawater desalination affordable by reducing energy costs.

Connecticut-based Poseidon Resources received final approval in August to begin building a $300 million water desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif., starting in the first half of this year (see Largest desalination plant in Western world gets go-ahead). The facility expects to produce 50 million gallons of drinkable water a day by 2011, making it double the capacity of the current largest U.S. plant and larger than any seawater desalination plant outside the Middle East.

Between 12 and 20 projects have been proposed along California's 1,100-mile coast, according to the state's Office of Water Use Efficiency and Transfers.

Among those, Santa Cruz and the Soquel Creek Water District plan to build a $30 million plant to deliver 2.5 million gallons a day to more than 130,000 customers by 2015.

And Poseidon is undergoing the permitting process to build a second desalination plant capable of producing 50 million gallons of drinking water daily in Huntington Beach, Calif. Poseidon was also involved in the desalination plant in Tampa, Fla., which produces 25 million gallons of drinkable water a day, making it the largest plant in the country (see Tampa Bay desalination plant rises again). 

Desalination is an energy-intensive process, and environmental groups have questioned its safety for marine creatures because of the water intake equipment and disposal of the brine byproduct.

"People are looking for an easy solution, and they look to the ocean," Linda Sheehan, executive director of the watchdog group California Coastkeeper Alliance, told the Chronicle. "They're ignoring the opportunities we have for conservation, storm water reuse and water recycling."

Water conservation costs $210 a year per acre-foot, while desalination costs more than $1,000 per acre-foot, according to a study last year by the Los Angeles Economic Development Council.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest producer of desalinated water, which makes up half the country's drinking supply (see Saudi Arabia adds to desal strategy). 

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