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Some four miles off the coast, a company is betting it can solve one of desalination’s biggest problems by moving the technology deep below the ocean’s surface.

OceanWell’s planned Water Farm 1 would use natural ocean pressure to power reverse osmosis — a process that forces seawater through membranes to filter out salt and impurities — and produce up to 60 million gallons of freshwater daily. Desalination is energy intensive, with plants worldwide producing between 500 and 850 million tons of carbon emissions annually — approaching the roughly 880 million tons emitted by the entire global aviation industry.

A new analysis says water rates in San Diego must go up another 44.2% between 2028 and 2031 even though the City Council agreed in October to raise them a cumulative 31.3% this year and next.

If the council ends up approving additional hikes that large when they come to a vote next year, the cumulative six-year rate increase would amount to more than 90%.

The San Diego City Council reconvenes on Monday after a two-week winter recess with a host of contentious issues to deal with. One of the first orders of business is a report on the five-year financial outlook of the city’s water and wastewater utility funds. Last October, the council approved two years of steep water rate hikes in order to pay for  federally mandated water infrastructure and the rising cost of water purchases.

The financial outlook report, however, states that two years of rate increases will not be enough to keep the utility funds solvent. Finance officials say, barring significant changes in costs or revenues, the city will have to raise water and sewer rates by 11.5% in fiscal year 2028, 11% in fiscal years 2029 and 2030 and 5% in fiscal year 2031.

The popular idea in San Diego these days is that we’re not growing – and if we are, it’s probably out in sprawly areas in the North and East County.

But new data from state demographers reveal the opposite is true. In the last three years, San Diego has added more population than any other county in the state except Riverside – and the vast majority of that growth has taken place in the city of San Diego.