The plant, which is expected to produce 5 million gallons of drinking water per day, is the first desalination facility that the Coastal Commission has approved since more strict regulations were adopted in 2019.
The California Coastal Commission has approved a $140 million desalination plant, amidst an ongoing drought
The plant, which is expected to produce 5 million gallons of drinking water per day, is the first desalination facility that the Coastal Commission has approved since more strict regulations were adopted in 2019.
However, it is still opposed by various groups, including several Sierra Club activists who spoke against the Doheny project at this week’s hearing, when they expressed their concerns about the impact on marine life and the amount of energy required to pump ocean water through the plant’s reverse osmosis filters.
By rejecting a $78.4 billion plan to desalinate seawater in Mexico and pump it to California in favour of a local $17 billion initiative, the panel also hopes to accelerate the restoration of the Salton Sea’s salinity levels to historic levels, while slashing the estimated annual CO2e emissions of the project by nearly 90%.
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 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.
In Israel, for example, five massive desalination plants on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea produce nearly a half-million acre feet of fresh water per year, an amount the nation plans to double by 2030. Israel’s Sorek Desalination Plant, located a few miles south of Tel Aviv, produces 185,000 acre feet of fresh water per year, from a highly automated operation that occupies only about 25 acres. Approximately 80 percent of Israel’s municipal water comes from desalination, and this nation of 9 million people is now exporting surplus water to Jordan.
Rather than filtering water, the ICP method uses an electrical field to apply to membranes above and below a water channel.
Negatively and positively charged particles, like viruses, salt molecules, and bacteria, are repelled by the membranes as they pass by. The charged particles are channeled into an additional stream of water, which is released later.
Desal won’t save California from its thirst, because….
Groundwater keeps shrinking, reservoirs keep drying. Is it time for California to use desalinization to increase its depleted water supplies? How California gets water? To be clear, California already has 11 operating desalinization plants of varying sizes and around 10 more pending approval.
The Claude Bud Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant in Carlsbad is the largest desal plant in the country.
Lake Oroville, an important reservoir in Butte County, had sunk to 49% of capacity by July 1. Lake Shasta was at […]