Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Water, Part II

Look at a map and compare the size of Israel to the size of California. California is about 20X the size of Israel, and California has about 5X the population of Israel.
Israel presently has five large desalination plants and an additional one under construction. This is in addition to 30 brackish desalination plants that are largely utilized for farming. How many does California have? If you had guessed three and were on The Wheel of Fortune you would be out, as a guess that is too high leads to “Good-night Irene”!
The Pacific Institute, an Oakland based environmental think tank,  has conducted research on desalination for more than a decade. In 2012 the Institute launched a series of research reports that identified the key outstanding issues for desalination in California. So what happened after all these years of research? As of May, 2016, there were nine active proposals for desalination plants along the California coast. Wow! This sounds like progress . . .until it comes out that this number is down from 21 proposed projects in 2006 and 19 in 2012. Since 2006, however, only two new projects have been built, and one of these is quite small!
The other ocean desalination plants are in Santa Barbara, Catalina Island, Marina and San Nicholas Island. Together they can produce about 4,000 acre-feet a year. This indeed is a very small amount when compared to the new Carlsbad Desalination Plant that produces 56,000 acre-feet per year.

As of January, 2018, California water officials have approved $34.4 million in grants to eight desalination projects across the state. The money comes from Proposition 1, a water bond passed by state voters in November 2014 during the depths of the drought, and it highlights a new trend in purifying salty water for human consumption: only one of the projects is dependent on the ocean. Instead, six of the winning proposals are for brackish desalination and one is for research at the University of Southern California. In brackish desalination, salty water from a river, bay or underground aquifer is filtered for drinking, rather than taking ocean water, which is often up to three times saltier and more expensive to purify. As of 2013, there were roughly 24 brackish plants in California. Together they produce about 96,000 acre-feet of water a year. Another three plants are in design or under construction, and these three will add only 9,000 acre-feet annually. An additional 17 have been proposed, adding only 81,000 acre-feet of capacity.

So let’s get this straight. It’s been almost four years since Proposition 1 was passed, and only now have “California water officials” decided to invest in brackish desalination. As noted above the 24 brackish desalination plants (2013) produced the water equivalent of two Carlsbad-like plants, and the one Carlsbad plant produces only seven percent of the drinking water in San Diego.

So far this approach sounds less like Israel’s vision and more like Capetown’s procrastination. However, don’t make your final decision until you have the the final part of this three part series.

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