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SAWHORSE
California Opens Up the Floodgates for Desalination
MAY 8, 2015 11:32 AM ET // BY PATRICK J. KIGER
http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/california-opens-up-the-floodgates-for-desalination-150508.htm
With California suffering through a brutal prolonged drought that already has forced communities there to cut water use by 25 percent, the state is moving aggressively to implement what some see as a longer-term solution for water shortages. On May 6, the State Water Resources Control Board approved the first statewide standards for building desalination plants, which would treat seawater from the Pacific Ocean and convert it to water suitable for drinking and other uses.
The decision, enacted by voice vote, sets rules that will allow regional water boards in California to evaluate applications to build and operate desalination plants and to expand existing ones, according to Reuters.
The move was welcomed by developers who already are moving ahead on big desalination projects, including the Carlsbad Desalination Project, a $1 billion plant near San Diego that is under construction and scheduled to begin delivering potable water to consumers this Fall. That project is expected to provide 50 million gallons of fresh water each day, about 7 percent of San Diego County’s water needs.
“It reaffirms that the Pacific Ocean is part of the drinking water resources for the state of California,” said Scott Maloni, an executive with Poseidon Water, a development firm that’s working on the Carlsbad project and another proposed plant in Huntington Beach.
California already has a string of small-scale desalination plants, such as one built in 1991 on Santa Catalina Island that provides about 90 percent of the drinking water for that isolated offshore community. By comparison, the Caribbean nation Aruba provides its residents with freshwater using a desalination plant with a capacity to provide 11 million gallons of freshwater a day. Israel currently has the world’s largest desalination planet, and its plants’ combined output provide freshwater to 35 percent of the population, with plans to produce 70 percent of Israel by mid-century.
Until now in California desalination was never considered as a serious option for quenching the state’s thirst, because the water was several times more expensive than water from conventional sources, according to a 2014 KABC-TV story.
But now, with water increasingly scarce and costly and technology costs lower, desalination looks more like a viable economic option. The New York Times recently reported that more than a dozen California communities are considering building desalination plants as well. Though the Carlsbad plant’s water will cost twice what San Diego County is paying for conventional water, it’s only expected to add about $5 to the typical $75 monthly water bill for San Diego area residents, according to the Sacramento Bee.
But critics of desalination warn that it isn’t a panacea for California’s water woes. Even with improvements in technology, it still requires an enormous amount of energy to push seawater through filters to remove salt, microbes, fine sand, clay and other substances. And there’s also the question of what to do with the concentrated saltwater, or brine, which is a waste product, since it can be deadly to marine life. The Carlsbad plant reportedly will deal with the waste by mixing brine with cooling water from the nearby NRG Encina power plant, so that the discharge will be only 20 percent saltier than the ocean.
MAY 8, 2015 11:32 AM ET // BY PATRICK J. KIGER
http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/california-opens-up-the-floodgates-for-desalination-150508.htm
With California suffering through a brutal prolonged drought that already has forced communities there to cut water use by 25 percent, the state is moving aggressively to implement what some see as a longer-term solution for water shortages. On May 6, the State Water Resources Control Board approved the first statewide standards for building desalination plants, which would treat seawater from the Pacific Ocean and convert it to water suitable for drinking and other uses.
The decision, enacted by voice vote, sets rules that will allow regional water boards in California to evaluate applications to build and operate desalination plants and to expand existing ones, according to Reuters.
The move was welcomed by developers who already are moving ahead on big desalination projects, including the Carlsbad Desalination Project, a $1 billion plant near San Diego that is under construction and scheduled to begin delivering potable water to consumers this Fall. That project is expected to provide 50 million gallons of fresh water each day, about 7 percent of San Diego County’s water needs.
“It reaffirms that the Pacific Ocean is part of the drinking water resources for the state of California,” said Scott Maloni, an executive with Poseidon Water, a development firm that’s working on the Carlsbad project and another proposed plant in Huntington Beach.
California already has a string of small-scale desalination plants, such as one built in 1991 on Santa Catalina Island that provides about 90 percent of the drinking water for that isolated offshore community. By comparison, the Caribbean nation Aruba provides its residents with freshwater using a desalination plant with a capacity to provide 11 million gallons of freshwater a day. Israel currently has the world’s largest desalination planet, and its plants’ combined output provide freshwater to 35 percent of the population, with plans to produce 70 percent of Israel by mid-century.
Until now in California desalination was never considered as a serious option for quenching the state’s thirst, because the water was several times more expensive than water from conventional sources, according to a 2014 KABC-TV story.
But now, with water increasingly scarce and costly and technology costs lower, desalination looks more like a viable economic option. The New York Times recently reported that more than a dozen California communities are considering building desalination plants as well. Though the Carlsbad plant’s water will cost twice what San Diego County is paying for conventional water, it’s only expected to add about $5 to the typical $75 monthly water bill for San Diego area residents, according to the Sacramento Bee.
But critics of desalination warn that it isn’t a panacea for California’s water woes. Even with improvements in technology, it still requires an enormous amount of energy to push seawater through filters to remove salt, microbes, fine sand, clay and other substances. And there’s also the question of what to do with the concentrated saltwater, or brine, which is a waste product, since it can be deadly to marine life. The Carlsbad plant reportedly will deal with the waste by mixing brine with cooling water from the nearby NRG Encina power plant, so that the discharge will be only 20 percent saltier than the ocean.