Desal Cal Now!

California Needs a Permanent Solution for Chronic Drought

(Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Richard Rubin, a long-time observer of California political and cultural life. He lives in Strawberry, a small community in Marin County where mandatory water conservation measures were recently put in place).

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Severe droughts are nothing new to California. In fact, since they were first recorded in 1841 there have been at least 28 years — not including the present one — when we experienced well below average precipitation.

In modern times, the most severe drought occurred from 2011-2016 lasting 340 weeks, California's longest since record-keeping began, a period considered the driest in 1,200 years. In 2015 alone, California saw its lowest snowpack in at least 500 years. Ironically, the winter of 2016-17 is considered the wettest ever recorded in Northern California. In comparison, 1977 was declared the driest year in state history only to be outdone 9 years later.

With the onset of such dramatically fluctuating climate changes, these intensive dry spells are becoming more predictable and with the heightening danger of uncontrollable wildfires, the consequences after years of parched earth more disastrous.

In addition to water shortages for municipal areas experiencing, even normal growth (statewide the population is declining, California having lost one seat in Congress for the first time in history), the impacts on agriculture and farming are significant. Roughly 5 million acre feet of water is sopped up in California every year just for cattle feed. For comparison, from 2008-15 more than 2.4 million acre feet were released into San Francisco Bay to save 36 Delta smelt. 

So what can be done to avert what some have labeled the coming weather apocalypse?

The answer may lie just off our shores in the unlimited supply of ocean water which can be tapped through the process known as desalination. It is already widely used in more than 150 nations with excellent results.

It relies upon a system known as reverse osmosis, which in simplest terms is a time-tested method of purifying salt water through use of partially permeable membranes that separate unwanted molecules to create safe drinking water. The U.S. Navy and globe-spanning merchant ships have been employing the rudimentary variations for over a century.

San Diego residents have been reaping its benefits since 2015 with the activation of the Poseidon Desal Plant in Carlsbad — the nation’s largest — delivering daily 56 million gallons of safe, reliable, environmentally benign, drinking water to 400,000 customers at reasonable rates.

This is rendering a big urban chunk of the region water-independent, eliminating reliance on water from Northern California and the Colorado River. The entire project was engineered through a creative public-private partnership with private investors assuming the majority of the risk.

The upfront capitalization does not come cheap, but with the amortization of the costs over many years users will not see egregious hikes in their water bills.

Now that San Diego has dipped its foot in the water, there are at least 20 desal projects in some stage of development. It could not be fast enough with Southern California water utilities intent on harvesting about 10 percent of their water supply from the Pacific and its tributaries by 2030. In Northern California, Monterey County has led the way with at least one desal project up and running in the city of Moss Landing.

With water demand continually rising, this might seem like  a drop in the bucket compared to the needs of nearly 40 million residents—but it’s a start. 

With stricter water rationing looming we are once again learning that we cannot simply conserve our way out of droughts. Unlike auto accidents, which can be avoided using extra care, nature is impervious to human behavior and for every responsible water user there are probably two who choose not to be.

Aa a candidate for the Marin Municipal Water Board 17 years ago I made a lot of speeches touting the virtues of desalination — to no avail. Marin put up a demo desal plant briefly only to abandon it after stiff resistance from implacable opponents who resisted on environmental grounds, water safety, cost concerns and shortsighted thinking about optimum energy usage.

Severe drought is once again upon us, additional reservoirs are not the solution when there is little rain. Time to rethink our water future.