Is it time for California to use desalinization to increase its depleted water supplies?

California is enduring another punishing drought, this one only a few years after the last one ended, which was the most severe drought in the state’s nearly 500 years of recorded history.

Low winter snowpack combined with scorching summer temperatures and the driest winter months in 100 years have severely impacted the state’s water supply.

Lake Oroville, an important reservoir in Butte County, had sunk to 49% of capacity by July 1. Lake Shasta was at 39% capacity.

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The Eastern Municipal Water District opened its third groundwater desalination plant, the Perris II Groundwater Desalination Facility.

The plant will remove salt from underground water basins tapped by wells in Perris — nearly 5.4 million gallons of water per day.

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Desalination projects have always been a contentious issue in Monterey County and a proposal that will be mulled by elected officials Tuesday afternoon is sure to raise the eyebrows of advocates for publicly owned desal projects.

The idea that will be presented to the Board of Supervisors during its afternoon session beginning at 1:30 p.m. is an amendment to an existing ordinance allowing only public ownership of desal plants rather than private ownership.

Tuesday’s action won’t approve or deny the ordinance, rather it will allow supervisors to give the nod to placing it on the June 21 agenda where they will consider what’s called a negative declaration, meaning under the California Environmental Quality Act requirements, the presiding governmental body finds that a project will have no significant environmental damage.

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Thirty years the town of Avalon on Catalina Island became the first city on the West Coast to have its own municipal desalination plant.

It was developing technology at the time, and the city hoped it would provide a stable source of drinking water on an island 23 miles off the coast of Southern California with few other options.

“I don’t know what we would have done without desalination,” said Avalon Mayor Anni Marshall, who has lived here for 38 years. “It’s been a huge help for us.”

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Newsom has pleaded with residents and businesses to reduce their water consumption by 15%. But in March, urban water usage was up by 19% compared to March 2020, the year the current drought began. It was the highest March water consumption since 2015, the State Water Resources Control Board reported earlier this week.

Part of the problem is that the urgency of the crisis isn’t breaking through to Californians. The messaging around water conservation varies across different authorities and jurisdictions, so people don’t have a clear idea of what applies to whom. And they certainly don’t have a tangible grasp on how much a 15% reduction is with respect to their own usage.

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