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A plan to have fresh water from an ocean desalination plant flowing into the system by October in Santa Barbara is behind schedule and that’s causing concerns.  A new schedule shows drinking water won’t be produced, tested and approved until January.

A city report says above ground supplies are dwindling, and eight under ground wells are in service citywide. Conservation goals during the Stage Three drought conditions need to remain at or above 35 percent according to Water Resources Manager Joshua Haggmark.

 

Water regulators have begun public hearings on California Governor Jerry Brown’s $15 billion twin tunnel project, known as California Waterfix. The project aims to provide a more reliable water supply for millions of Californians.

The public hearings that began Tuesday at the State Water Resources Control Board are supposed to be narrow in focus – the board must determine whether building three new water intakes on the Sacramento River would harm other water users or the environment.

Long before wind and solar, water was the nation’s top renewable energy source. Going back some 100 years, the United States built enormous dams — like the Depression-era Hoover Dam in Nevada — to produce tremendous amounts of energy.

We have so many such dams that hydropower last year remained our fourth largest source of electricity overall and our single largest renewable source, providing 6 percent of Americans’ electricity. Yet it’s rarely talked about and lacks the excitement attached to other renewables. That’s in part because dams are controversial and can have major environmental consequences, affecting wildlife and altering local ecosystems.

The State Water Resources Control Board will began public hearings, today, on the controversial California WaterFix. The plan would add three new points of diversion that would move water around the Delta and to pumps near Tracy for transport to southern parts of the state.

Farmers and environmentalists fear the project would mean less water for Central Valley agricultural uses and lessen the health of the Delta’s ecosystem and water quality. Unions and Southern California interests tend to be in favor of the project. Unions argue the project would bring thousands of high-paying jobs.

The water that flows into Sorek desalination plant is drawn from near the Mediterranean Sea floor. Pumped inland, the water is cleansed, step by step, of salts and impurities. The transmutation does not take long. Forty minutes after entering the facility, the stuff of sailboats and sunbathers is now drinkable.

Sorek is the newest of five Israeli coastal desalination plants. A national mission in the last decade to develop the fleet, plus many more years of investment in wastewater recycling facilities, have turned Israel into as much a water producer as a water consumer.