REGION: Desalination projects stymied in California
Tiffany Hsu
Los Angeles Times
12/28/2010
LOS ANGELES ---- Chugging a cool glass of California tap?
Someday it could be seawater flowing from the faucet.
Desalination ---- the process of making salty water drinkable
---- is now producing a growing share of the national water supply
as officials scramble to hydrate booming populations with dwindling
fresh supply.
"The availability of water is lessening and the cost is going
up, to the point that desalination in California is becoming viable
as an option," said Paul Shoenberger, manager of the Mesa
Consolidated Water District in Costa Mesa.
More than 15,000 plants are churning out tens of billions of
drinkable gallons daily in more than 100 countries.
But desalination has been lagging in California, where water
woes are especially dire, industry and government officials say.
They blame the slow progress on a disorganized local industry,
litigious environmentalists and a thorny approvals process.
For their part, environmentalists say the proposed desalination
plants are excessively harmful to coastal life, and that private
investors are reluctant to invest in them without government
guarantees putting taxpayers at risk. San Diego Coastkeeper, one
such group, says it's not opposed to desalination in principle, but
would like to first see agencies recycle sewage for potable
reuse.
Connecticut-based developer Poseidon Resources has been trying
to build a desalination plant in Carlsbad. The project is estimated
to cost $650 million, financed with $530 million from the sale of
tax-exempt state bonds and the balance from private investors.
The project has wallowed in red tape for more than a decade. It
also has battled a dozen legal challenges. These challenges have
been nearly entirely defeated. But a financial dispute between the
city of Carlsbad and the San Diego County Water Authority, which
wants to buy the water from Poseidon, poses a new obstacle.
Carlsbad has asked the Water Authority for a guarantee that it
won't lose millions in tax increment money if the authority buys
the plant from Poseidon. As a public entity, the authority is not
obligated to pay taxes to Carlsbad, while privately held Poseidon
is so obligated. Carlsbad is refusing to release Poseidon from an
agreement unless its terms are met.
Seeking local supply
The desalination plant, which would sit beside the Encina Power
Station, would churn out 50 million gallons of drinkable water a
day. That's 8 percent of San Diego County's needs, according to the
most recent figures from the Water Authority.
The facility may start construction in March, executives said,
the latest estimate in a series that Poseidon has pushed back over
the years in response to the legal and administrative hurdles. But
for now, a small pilot project on the site is producing about
40,000 gallons of drinkable water a day.
"Water is the lifeblood of Southern California, but the industry
here has not evolved along with the growth in technology," said
Scott Maloni, a vice president with Poseidon.
After decades in development, desalination plants can now remove
99.9 percent of the salt content in water. The process is mostly
used for seawater but can also be applied to river water and
irrigation runoff. In the last 15 years, the cost of some
components has dropped 30 percent.
Although still not cheap, the cost of desalinated water has been
cut by more than half since 1998, according to the U.S. Geological
Survey. Some estimates peg the price of 1,000 gallons at roughly
$3, compared with pennies for the same amount of fresh water.
Most countries, including the U.S., use reverse osmosis, in
which water is pushed at high pressure through a membrane that
separates the salt from the liquid. Another method, thermal
desalination, is popular in the Middle East and involves
evaporating the water to leave the salt behind.
Singapore officials market their desalination efforts as
NEWater. The French Riviera, Spain and Israel are peppered with
desalting facilities.
Every major city in drought-stricken Australia ---- which had no
desalination plants five years ago ---- is now either constructing
or operating one. Officials there acted "out of crisis and
desperation," said water industry analyst Debra Coy, and now
California "may not be too far behind."
High costs cited
Seawater desalination plants are in planning stages in Dana
Point, Long Beach, Camp Pendleton and Redondo Beach, but some have
met with resistance, particularly from critics who say the cost is
too high.
A recent analysis from the California Division of Ratepayer
Advocates estimated that customers in Monterey could see their
water bills quadruple if a proposed facility there is built.
Some say it would be worth the cost. The state's natural water
resources ---- such as the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains ----
are overtapped, industry officials said. Southern California is
especially vulnerable because the region imports most of its water,
and the state is in a drought.
Desalination efforts in Southern California have been stymied by
regulatory red tape and a disjointed industry. The cost and
barriers to entry for desalination companies also remain very high.
Such plants require hundreds of millions of dollars to build using
complicated technology.
"It's not a startup-friendly market," said Gibran Mursalin, a
sales manager for Hydranautics, an Oceanside maker of desalination
components.
And in California, permitting can be a slog. The process ----
sometimes called the 800-pound regulatory gorilla ---- involves
state and regional water boards, air boards, environmental reviews
and the state Coastal Commission.
Building a desalination plant on schedule in the state is a
rarity. There's even been talk among industry officials of piping
in water from plants in Mexico to avoid the complications.
"It's risky to go into desalination because the permitting is
complicated, the planning structure is not there and the cost for a
private company is significant," said Finn Nielsen, chairman of
water supplier Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies USA.
Process kills wildlife
Desalination plants have also faced strong objections from
environmentalists.
Though industry supporters say desalination isn't as damaging to
the environment as damming up rivers or transporting fresh water
across the state, the process still requires 2 gallons of seawater
to make 1 fresh gallon. The machinery sucks up marine life, mostly
small fish, larvae and plankton, killing it, and spews concentrated
brine into the ocean.
And the saltier the water, the more energy it takes to make the
liquid drinkable, leading some opponents to deride the end product
as "bottled electricity." The cost of the power required to run the
plants often constitutes more than half of the total operational
cost.
The industry is investigating ways to maximize its energy
efficiency, reaching out to startups for innovative ideas and
experimenting with renewable energy to power facilities. In
November the International Desalination Association met in
Huntington Beach to discuss potential solutions.
Energy Recovery Inc. in San Leandro says its technology can
reduce power use in desalination by 60 percent.
In the meantime, the industry is still waiting to take off,
watching for any movement on the construction of the Poseidon plant
in Carlsbad and a large Poseidon facility in Huntington Beach.
