Why is ocean desal an unacceptable answer for
California?

  • Drinking water quality of desal water is UNKNOWN.













  • Ocean water intakes kill untold amounts of marine
    life.  Intakes further threaten vital marine ecosystems:  
    an important economic resource.  
  • Desal plant proposals are co-located with outdated,
    coastal power plants.   A recent 2nd Circuit Court ruling
    states that the Once-Through-Cooling systems that utilize
    power plant intakes must be phased out.  Desal projects
    prevent inefficient, polluting plants from being shutdown
    or retrofitted.   
  • Large-scale desal has NEVER WORKED in the U.S. The
    largest U.S. plant located in Tampa Bay, Florida,  (built by
    Poseidon Resources), has NEVER produced the amount of
    water promised, cost millions to build, and now needs to be
    fixed for $29-100 million.
  • The Pacific Institute & the Planning and Conservation League
    explains that California’s water needs can be met for the
    next 20 years or longer through:

  1. CONSERVATION
  2. WATER REUSE
  3. RECYCLING

These solutions are less expensive to implement and maintain
than desal.
  • The projected cost of desal water is 2-4 times higher
    than other water sources due to expensive:  construction,
    operation and maintenance, as well as extremely high
    energy costs.  Currently, the lowest proposed cost of desal
    water is estimated to be $1100 per acre-foot.  Imported
    water is only about $524 per acre-foot.  

  • Desal will not return water to the struggling ecosystems
    that currently supply Californians with water and there are
    absolutely no certified guarantees that it will.  The high
    cost of desal water forced it to be sold for high income
    development, causing over-development in some of the
    only remaining open state coastal areas.  There are even
    proposals to send Californian ocean desal water to support
    growth in Las Vegas, NV.

  • Concentrated brine from Desal discharged after desalting
    ocean water will have untold impacts on delicate coastal
    marine life.  Some of the proposed plants are located in
    rare sensitive rocky habitat that is particularly at risk from
    the brine.  The cumulative impacts from these discharges
    are unknown and must be studied before ocean desal
    moves forward.

  • Desal depends on multi-million dollar coastal
    infrastructures which may be threatened by global climate
    change and rising sea levels.




There is a rush to start desal yet there are so many
unanswered questions about how it will affect the ocean,
local economies, and the future of outdated power plants.
Time should to address these issues to prevent damage to
fragile ecosystems.  Conservation, water reuse and
recycling are the only way to reduce California’s water
needs and return water to struggling ecosystems.