Oct 13 (Reuters) – California regulators unanimously approved a $140 million desalination plant on Thursday, offering a guideline for how the state can convert ocean water into drinking water amid the worst drought in 1,200 years.
The plant, expected to produce 5 million gallons of drinking water per day, enough for some 40,000 people, will serve a small water utility in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles.
The Dana Point desalination plant would produce about 5 million gallons of potable water daily with the ability to eventually generate 15 million gallons a day. But an increase in volume would require further review and a larger pipeline, the report said.
The water district says Doheny State Beach is drought proof. The Pacific Ocean could provide as much five million gallons a day of drinking water.
Currently the district imports about 85% of its water for some 35,000 customers.
The other 15% comes from this plant where unusable storm creek runoff is treated through reverse osmosis then sent to homes and businesses.
The Marina Coast Water District (MCWD) announced at a meeting of the Monterey County Board of Supervisors that it is going to restart its long-dormant desalination plant.
At full capacity, it can produce 300,000 gallons per day of potable water, according to MCWD’s website.
SeaWell LLC, a company formed by Ecomerit Technologies, the Santa Barbara renewable energy pioneer and long-time US Department of Energy partner in technology innovation, is working with Vandenberg Space Force Base to deploy SeaWell’s ocean desalination buoys to produce freshwater for the Base. SeaWell buoys can be rapidly deployed to help meet the critical need for a dependable water supply. A single buoy provides a yearly water supply comparable to 5,200 households.
The plan is to provide roughly 950 acre-feet of freshwater annually. That’s equal to more than 309 million gallons. The project is in its very early stages. If the pilot program is approved, the desalination buoy could be in the water by 2025.
His plan calls for creating storage for four million acre-feet of water and recycling or reusing 800,000 acre-feet per year by 2030 in addition to more stormwater capture and desalination projects.
An acre-foot of water is generally considered enough to supply two urban households per year.
«The hots are getting a lot hotter, the dries are getting a lot drier and … the wets are getting wetter,» Governor Gavin Newsom said on Thursday at a desalination plant under construction in Antioch, 72 kilometres inland from San Francisco, that will turn brackish water […]
The new facility, located at the city’s wastewater treatment plant, will use large reverse-osmosis filters to create 6 million gallons of fresh water per day–about a third of the city’s needs–but with room for expansion.
That wastewater recycling plant is currently in the design phase and set to be in operation by 2025. It’ll likely provide 900 to 1,000 acre-feet per year of fresh water for Pismo Beach, Grover Beach, Arroyo Grande, Oceano and the county.
The city has great access to saline water.
…in 2016, Catalina invested in a second desalination plant, which turns saltwater into freshwater. Together the plants now process nearly 250,000 gallons of water per day, which is about 40% of the island’s drinking water.