Desalination not a cheap water solution
By Matt Weiser, Sacramento Bee
CARLSBAD — Along this patch of the Pacific Ocean, welders and pipefitters nearly outnumber the surfers and sunbathers. Within sight of the crashing waves, the laborers are assembling what some hope will make water scarcity a thing of the past.
They are building the Carlsbad Desalination Project, which will convert as much as 56 million gallons of seawater each day into drinking water for San Diego County residents. The project, with a price tag of $1 billion, is emerging from the sand like an industrial miracle. In California’s highly regulated coastal zone, it took nearly 15 years to move from concept to construction, surviving 14 legal challenges along the way.
The desalination plant is being built by Poseidon Water, a private company, and will be paid for in large part by rate increases on San Diego County water customers. On the surface, the plant resembles any other major construction project: Construction cranes scrape the sky as concrete foundations are poured; the giant new blocky building could be any warehouse or parts factory.
Inside, the truth of the project is revealed. The building will house more than 16,000 reverse-osmosis membranes – salt filters, essentially – that will convert the Pacific Ocean into drinking water suitable for making coffee and watering lawns.
Reverse-osmosis desalination was invented in California in the 1950s. But other nations with fewer natural freshwater supplies – Israel, Australia, Saudi Arabia and others – embraced the technology first and built dozens of projects over the past few decades. When the Carlsbad plant begins operating in 2016, it will be the largest desalination project ever built in the Americas. Desalination on this scale is so new, said MacLaggan, that Carlsbad will be operated initially by an Israeli subcontractor, which will help train a staff of California workers.
The eyes of a thirsty state are trained on this project: It is a crucial test for an industry eager to expand in California, where residents are famously protective of their coastline and also accustomed to relatively cheap water. In short, the Carlsbad project is challenging California’s status quo while also offering the tantalizing prospect of relief from drought.
One of the big challenges is energy demand. Desalination requires more electricity than nearly any other water source, because water must be forced through reverse-osmosis membranes by high-pressure pumps. The San Diego County Water Authority committed to the Carlsbad project partly because it anticipates imported water will become more expensive over time and eventually reach parity with desalination.
Others view that equation differently. Four years ago, the city of Long Beach abandoned its desalination plans because of the energy cost. The city of Santa Cruz, with no imported water to shore up its supplies, rejected desalination after an uproar from residents concerned about the cost and environmental risks. The Marin Municipal Water District also decided for similar reasons in 2010 not to pursue desalination, and it boosted conservation efforts instead.
About a dozen new desalination projects are in various planning stages throughout the state. Only a few are as large as Carlsbad. The nearest to construction is another Poseidon project, proposed in Huntington Beach. A final permit from the state Coastal Commission comes up for a vote late in 2015.
Anticipating more proposals, the State Water Resources Control Board is drafting new regulations to govern desalination. The rules focus primarily on two crucial operating features: seawater intakes and outfalls.
Safe modern nuclear power can supply unlimited energy, and ample power to supply desalination plants. bIG oil don’t like that .
During the dust bowl era, people left the Midwest. Such will be the same in California as the state’s water system was designed for a population of 12,000,000.
BC (as usual) your facts and analysis are way off. The number is 17 million. And do you want us to think that nothing has changed since the system was designed? Has it expanded?
Fish, it absolutely amazes me that you are a pure genius! I’ve never come across anyone that is so knowledgeable in all aspects. As well so demeaning to all that don’t exceed your very high IQ. Unfortunately genius is usually not condescending, so maybe your not as smart as you think. As well, the amount of time you sit behind your computer bashing LTN bloggers under a guise would actually contradict my above statement. You just have no life!
TahoeBlue. Umm. After the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Japan, I think nuclear power plants have long odds of being built.
However, someone better get a hold of the Australians. I believe they have a reverse osmosis system driven by Ocean Waves and Solar technology that reduces the cost to about .4 cents per gallon. A gallon of water in California averages about .2 cents per gallon now. Yes, the cost is higher but it is a new source of fresh water.
Joby. Are you really trying to defend Bitter?
Would be interesting to know how much water is used in So.Lake Tahoe by the S.T.U.D daily. Did you know that they draw water from the LAKE ?? and wells but all are mixed, nice free water source.
No wonder the lake is below the rim.
STPUD does not use lake water, though other water companies in the basin do.
LTN staff
The answer is not simply desalination as a stand-alone solution (pardon the pun). The answer is in the synergy of energy production, water supply, sewage treatment, resource extraction and other, yet-to-be-determined mutually beneficent technologies. Such cooperative efforts will likely be labeled as “socialism” by some.
In 2010 STPUD provided 6546 acre-feet to water to the community. If we estimate the lake area to be 100 square miles, that usage is about 1.2 inches of water drop in lake level for the year.
There are good reasons to conserve water, but lake level is not one of them. Of course, that assumes that water taken from the ground translates into a decrease in lake level and that may not be true and so the actual decrease in lake level is probably less than 1.2 inches.
Joby, if the ability to spend 10 seconds on google to search ‘california water system population designed’ (exact phrase i used) is a sign of an exceptional IQ, I have to wonder how do you people dress yourselves every day?
BC has an information and context problem. People with respect for data, information and basic analytical abilities resent people like BC who muddle the discussion because their politics benefit from a lack of discussion.
‘In 2010 STPUD provided 6546 acre-feet to water to the community. If we estimate the lake area to be 100 square miles, that usage is about 1.2 inches of water drop in lake level for the year.
That’s what I’m talking about. Data, information, analysis. Notice how they used conservative estimates (the lake surface area is closer to 200), and an assumption that works for the idea they are trying to disprove. I am going to pay attention to a person who know where to find the number of acre feet and arrive at a meaningful number.
An even better measure would be how much waste is collected through the sewer system, and pumped out of the basin.
That person just used math and stuff. I just used the google and its many series of tubes.
Thank you Secretary Not Sure.
Rock4,the Japanese nuke plants were built in the 50s. Hardly modern technology. Today’s plants can be built safely using less uranium and shutdown containment processes in the event of earthquakes.
Fish
I’m referring to your many posts of which you declare yourself to be so much smarter than everyone else and ridicule those with differing opinions. I’m sure you are quite intelligent, so show it by not belittling all that disagree. In this case, a ten second Google of which I used the exact search term that you gave, offered many differing opinions. Most stated the water system is serving 24-30 million people. So what are you talking about? I will try very hard to offer positive posts that contribute to a positive debate/dialogue, I’m hopeful you can do the same.
Several water co’s use lake water. In SLT many of the wells currently operative have water levels about the same as the Lake level and are drawing from the sandy sediments near the lake edge. Therefore they are also drawing lake water, just from the saturated sediments that line much of the Tahoe Basin.
Wells drilled into the hard rocks, aka granites, mostly are “fracture wells”. These tap water that comes from snow melt and rain in areas of faulting significantly above the lake elevation. Some are also drawing water from faults which extend below the elevation of lake Tahoe, so extremely likely to be also drawing lake water from interconnected fractures and faults in the granites.
Not an excuse to avoid conservation, but Tahoe is not short on ground water and likely never will be.
Dry years which have less runoff and snow melt certainly affect total water.
FYI, the radon problems often encountered in STPUD wells is from the decay of radioactive minerals contained in the granites. Can be removed by air stripping machines.
The radon in the granites is also why crawl spaces in Tahoe need to be ventilated and or plastic lined to reduce radon infiltration and weak radioactivity into the structures where it may affect residents.
Long term human exposure to radon over certain levels has been indicated to be responsible for some lung cancers.
With global “climate” change responsible for the rise of all the earth seas, I have always thought desalination is the perfect way to provide needed water for all of our costal cities. The more the ocean rises the more we can use the desalinated water? People have suggested water will be the most sought after resource of the distant future?
Tahoeblue. Construction on the Fukushima Nuclear Plants started in 1967 with the first reactor coming online in 1971. Also, the history of the Plants are not stellar.
You may be correct in new designs and newer technology, but I would still warn of a wary public to nuclear power in general.
‘Most stated the water system is serving 24-30 million people
Yes, that is what the current system is serving. The key word is ‘designed’. I don’t know why they are so hung up on what it was originally designed for, because as we all know it is has expanded.
The site that mentions to ‘designed for 17 million’ is a biased source that is supporting something weird, it reeks of what BC sells.
The first page of google rarely traps those kind of results.
‘ The more the ocean rises the more we can use the desalinated water?
OK Joby help me out. How do I not answer that question sarcastically, and address how absurd it is? (honest question).
‘ I will try very hard to offer positive posts that contribute to a positive debate/dialogue, I’m hopeful you can do the same.
I have tried hard. Some of the people here are impossibly uninformed, willfully ignorant (the worst), promoters of blatant disinformation.
I would never disrespect a knitting club by crashing their meetings, telling them what to do, and talking from a place of ignorance. If you want to be a part of a discussion on climate change you should be expected to operate using a basic understanding of climate. Some of these people don’t. They don’t care, they can’t acknowledge that basic definition or their argument case falls apart. I am not super smart because I have a basic understanding of climate. They are terrible because they refuse to acknowledge it. That is part of their tactic, because they know their opinion lacks substance.
Some political groups encourage members to go out on the internet and post things that derail discussions. Some of them are even paid to do so. I think those discussions are important. And the people who derail the discussions are doing something far worse than what I do with scathing and condescending responses.
As much as I would like to be able to behave myself like Bill Nye during his discussion with the founder of the creationist ‘museum’, I can’t. Or maybe I choose not to, or don’t care.
I do believe we are in a state of climate change. What is causing that change is still up for debate. if it is truly global warming caused by greenhouse gas, the US is already regulating to some of the highest standards in the world. If China, India, and other third world countries don’t change its all for not. If we are in a climate change that is caused by forces greater than human kind as has been taking place ove the past 1,00,000 years +, what is the solution? Conservation, common sense reducing greenhouse gas as well as pollution certainly can’t hurt but to definitively conclude this is a purely a human caused problem is not consistent with current science, politics aside. You jumped in months ago on a debate regarding our own fisheries something of which my small hillbilly mind has a pretty good handle on and your criticism was as you state ‘disrespect a knitting club by crashing their meeting. Let’s agree that we are not all well versed in al topics and positive dialogue or none at all is better than criticizing ignorance. As my great grand pappy stated with no uncertain terms, “you can’t argue with stupid”.
Poor grammar forgive me…
At one time our Navy Base Point Loma, San Diego had a desal plant.
The Guantanamo Bay Navy base was under siege by Fidel Castro. He turned off the water lines to the base.
Within a short period of time the desal plant Point Loma was dismantled and shipped to Guantanamo Bay.
‘…definitively conclude this is a purely a human caused problem is not consistent with current science, ‘
Yes it is.