California has a lot of coastline. So why all the fuss about the drought? Desalination to the rescue, right?
Not quite. The largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere is currently under construction in Carlsbad in San Diego County at great expense. The price tag: $1 billion.
Right now, San Diego is almost totally dependent on imported water from Sierra snowmelt and the Colorado River. When the desalination plant comes online in 2016, it will produce 50 million gallons per day, enough to offset just 7 percent of the county's water usage. That's a huge bill for not very much additional water.
Desalination is not a new technology, but it's still expensive. Despite the cost, its uptake is growing as dry places look to secure drought-proof sources of water. A new desalination plant built on reverse-osmosis microfiltering (the same method as the Carlsbad plant) will supply one-third of Beijing's water by 2019. Desalination is already a major source of water for Australia, Chile, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other drought-prone coastal regions. Smaller solar desalination plants are also gaining appeal in California.
When regional water agencies first considered a Bay Area desalination plant more than a decade ago, they briefly considered making it more than double the size of the plant currently under construction in San Diego County. Since then, the idea for the Bay Area plant has been scaled back to about 10 percent of the original size based on the maximum intake capacity of the local water district. A tentative location has also been chosen: Mallard Slough, near where the Sacramento River meets the Bay. The plant is now on indefinite hold pending local demand, though studies have proven it's technically feasible.
"We're nowhere near done doing all the environmental impact reporting," said Abby Figueroa of East Bay Municipal Utility District, one of the partners of the would-be Bay Area desalination plant. "There are other options that are more likely for us to use in the short term. We're counting on conservation as one of those supplies."
Still, the drought may force a decision sooner rather than later. "This is year one [of the drought] for us. Other parts of California are in year three or four. The real pressure for us is going to come next year if it doesn't rain."
Which brings us to the pee-drinking.
This year's drought has motivated California to invest $1 billion in new money on water recycling efforts statewide, a much more cost-efficient way of increasing potable water supplies. But reusing purified sewer water for brushing your teeth is not without its own set of issues. National Journal describes the biggest holdup:
The problem with recycled water is purely psychological. Despite the fact the water is safe and sterile, the "yuck factor" is hard to get over, even if a person understands that the water poses no harm. In one often-cited experiment, researchers poured clean apple juice into a clean bedpan, and asked participants if they'd be comfortable drinking the apple juice afterwards. Very few of the participants agreed, even though there was nothing wrong with it. It's forever associated with being "dirty," just like recycled wastewater...
Please read more from source: Why Californians Will Soon Be Drinking Their Own Pee
This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
