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Private Projects Forge Ahead
The coastal desalination plants now being considered vary in size, character, and purpose. In October, the Coastal Commission unanimously approved a pilot project to be built by the City of Santa Cruz Water Department at the University of Santa Cruz Long Marine Laboratory to help the City decide whether to build a 2.5 million-gallons-a-day (MGD) facility to provide water during droughts, earthquakes, and other crises. The city might also opt to run it year-round and sell water to nearby communities.
In December, California American Water (Cal-Am), currently owned by RWE, a corporation based in Germany, won a divided Commission's approval for a pilot facility on the site of the Moss Landing power plant, which has once-through cooling. Cal-Am, the principal water supplier for the Monterey Peninsula, intends to build a plant that would generate 11 to 12 MGD, the amount the State Water Resources Control Board has required it to stop drawing from the Carmel River watershed. Cal-Am has been taking more than its permitted amount from the river, impeding efforts to restore the river's steelhead population.

The Marin County Water District is considering a plant next to a wastewater treatment plant on the San Quentin peninsula. It would take water from offshore and discharge brine with wastewater. San Francisco, Santa Clara County, and the East Bay Municipal Utility District are considering a large regional plant.

The projects that have made the most headway are also the biggest, proposed by Poseidon, whose headquarters are in Stamford, Connecticut, as public/private partnerships, co-located with power plants in Huntington Beach and Carlsbad. Each would be twice as big as the desalination plant in Tampa, Florida, which is supposed to generate 25 MGD. Also launched by Poseidon, it has been plagued by technical and management problems. Two companies involved in the project went bankrupt before it was completed. The regional water management agency, Tampa Water, now owns it and hopes to take it into full operation in 2008, six years later than originally planned. Tampa Water is investing another $29 million to work out the problems with the help of Cal-Am and a firm from Spain. The original $100-million price tag has jumped to $150 million, watertechnology.net, a water industry website, states.

The Cities of Huntington Beach and Carlsbad have approved Poseidon's environmental impact reports. The next steps are leases from the State Lands Commission and a permit from the Coastal Commission.
"Desal proponents in the biggest hurry are the private companies," said Surfrider's Geever. "Public agencies seem to be taking a more cautious approach." The City of Long Beach, for example, has a ten-year "drought-proof" strategic plan and is bent on finding an "affordable" approach. The Municipal Water District of Orange County has finalized a successful pilot demonstration of sub-seafloor intakes that avoid marine life mortality.

Coastal Commission's Criteria
Water management is fragmented in California and no strategic plan exists in which the whole picture of needs, requirements, and options is examined. The Coastal Commission hopes to remedy that, at least partly. "Now that water issues are moving to the coast, the Coastal Act allows us to take a more comprehensive look at different issues," Luster said. The Commission has established criteria for proposals and guidelines to help permit applicants move smoothly through the process. The criteria are: The facility should be set back from the coastline; a subsurface water-intake system should be used where possible; brine should be discharged through an existing outfall when possible; the plant should be publicly owned; the applicant should show that the water will affect an already developed area with an approved growth plan; and the service area should have an effective conservation program.

Because it met five of these six criteria, a relatively small project in Sand City north of Monterey, proposed by the Pajaro-Mesa Utility District with Poseidon, was approved within six months. The project has a subsurface intake, is to be sited a half mile inland, and there is a plan to move it farther inland if coastal erosion occurs.

In the case of the Cal-Am pilot project to be co-located at the Moss Landing power plant, the Commission's permit approval went against its staff recommendation that it be denied. Staff found that the proposal did not conform to the Local Coastal Plan and did not adequately protect sensitive natural resources. It was proposed by a private company, although Monterey County has an ordinance requiring public ownership for desalination plants. At the Commission hearing, Cal-Am president Ken Turner said no decision had been made on what kind of intake the plant would have. The pilot project will simply provide needed information, he said. Permit opponents saw the pilot plant as the first step toward a co-located plant that, even if small at first, could be expanded once the distribution system is in place.

Drawing water from the sea bottom is considered to be less environmentally harmful than taking it from the surface. However, subsurface intakes are mostly suitable for small projects and are inappropriate in some locations, said Poseidon's Voutchkov. In Huntington Beach, he said, the seafloor is too polluted, while surface waters are consistently clean, except after storms. Unanswered questions about the impact of pollution, red tides, and other ocean water quality variables on desalinated water is the subject of a study being prepared by the West Basin Municipal Water District in Los Angeles.

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