Santa Barbara Rejects Subsurface Water Intake For Desalination Plant

The city of Santa Barbara won’t pursue a subsurface ocean intake for its desalination plant after a study revealed that the process would either be infeasible or fail to meet the city’s needs.

Like most desalination plants, the city’s plant has an open water intake pipe in the ocean, but environmentalists say that process kills microorganisms and other sea life. In response to the concerns, the city commissioned a study to evaluate six different ways to extract water through a subsurface — from the seabed — process.