This year marks the 30th anniversary of Southern California Edison’s (SCE) first desalination plant on Catalina Island. The desalination process strips salt out of ocean water from two underground saltwater beach wells to make it drinkable. The desalination plant was considered a developing technology in 1992. It was the first ocean water to drinking water plant on the West Coast and one of the first prototypes in the country.

SCE built the first desalination plant in response to the development of the nearby Hamilton Cove condominiums and the drought in the late 1980s.