A permit approved Thursday by the California Coastal Commission will allow the Carlsbad desalination plant to modify its seawater intakes and discharge structures to better protect marine life and create a “stand-alone” system.
Poseidon Resources (Channelside) LP and the San Diego County Water Authority are temporarily reducing water production at the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant to support statewide emergency energy conservation efforts during the extreme heat wave.
Water production at the Carlsbad desalination plan has been temporarily reduced to conserve power while the heat wave stresses California’s electric grid.
The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, which can produce up to 50 million gallons per day, typically accounts for about 1% of peak electricity demand in San Diego Gas & Electric’s service area.
Despite being surrounded by water, Bay Area residents are routinely told during dry years to take shorter showers, let lawns brown and slow the rush of water from their taps.
But as climate change prolongs drought and challenges local water supply, regional water managers are warning that none of those actions will be enough. Many say the time has come to invest in technically feasible, though politically and environmentally complicated alternatives like purifying wastewater and sucking salt out of seawater to bolster stores.
On May 12, the California Coastal Commission is expected to consider final approval of the Huntington Beach desalination plant. Poseidon Water has weaved through the state’s complex and evolving regulatory landscape for nearly two decades in pursuit of that development permit.
Signing off on this project would demonstrate that seawater desalination — a proven water resource technology relied upon around the world to combat the effects of climate change and drought — has a future in California.
During the last few years, California’s drought situation has become more and more dire. While a large chunk of it is self-inflicted by the state, as they release an incredible amount of water from dams each year for environmental purposes instead of, you know, agriculture and people, part of it is also that rain and snowpack build have been well below averages in the past. Northern California still has restrictions going on, with Southern California, facing another hot summer, may face a scenario in some areas where water may run out if usage stays as high as it is now.
Some of San Diego’s neighbors to the north are facing tough water restrictions. Others are in dispute over whether to move forward with a big, expensive water project. Meanwhile, levels at some huge reservoirs have never been so low.
The impacts of the yearslong drought on water supplies are growing across the state, as is the dilemma about how to address them.
But not in the San Diego region. That’s been the case for years, but it’s becoming more apparent as the state appears to be taking a more nuanced approach toward water restrictions. Rather than statewide mandatory cuts, California leaders are considering taking into account the status of local supplies.
One day after approving a restriction that will limit outdoor watering to once a week for millions of Southern California residents and businesses, leaders of the region’s largest water wholesaler said Wednesday they needed to take unprecedented steps to respond to the record drought.
“The reality is, this drought has left us without the water supply we need to meet normal demands in these areas,” Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, said in a statement.
In the rolling hills around San Diego and its suburbs, the rumble of bulldozers and the whine of power saws fill the air as a slew of new homes and apartments rise up. The region is booming, its population growing at a rate of about 1 percent a year.
This, in spite of the fact that Southern California, along with much of the West, is in the midst of what experts call a megadrought that some believe may not be a temporary, one-off occurrence, but a recurring event or even a climate change-driven permanent “aridification” of the West. The drought is so bad that last year federal officials ordered cuts to water provided to the region by the Colorado River for the first time in history.
Water officials in San Diego, though, say they are not worried. “We have sufficient supplies now and in the future,” said Sandra Kerl, general manager of the San Diego Water Authority. “We recently did a stress test and we are good until 2045” and even beyond.
Carlsbad State Beach is a Southern California idyll. Palm trees adorn the cliffs above the sand, and surfers paddle out for the waves. From the beach it is impossible to tell that a huge desalination plant not half a mile away is sucking in seawater to produce 50 million gallons of new drinking water each day. It is the largest in America—for now. Soon it may share that title with a proposed sister plant 60 miles (97km) north in Huntington Beach. But only if that one is built.
Poseidon Water, the developer that also built the Carlsbad plant, first proposed the Huntington Beach facility in the 1990s. But it has taken the company more than two decades to persuade Californians of the plant’s necessity.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
