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Desalination Workshop & Update- It’s Too Expensive and California Doesn’t Need it (exerpt from California Coastwatcher, May 2005): Jonas Minton, a project manager and senior water policy analyst with Planning and Conservation League (PCL, on the web at www.pcl.org), provided the public and members of the Coastal Commission with a policy briefing and update on his efforts to monitor water usage, policy and desalination projects in California on May 11, 2005.
Among other things, Minton explained to the Coastal Commission that California was expected to need an additional 3 million acre feet of water per year by 2030, related to an expected 12 million new residents (2 million acre feet) and necessary environmental restoration of 1 million acre feet. However, conservation strategies for California water through urban conservation, agricultural conservation and water recycling are expected to yield some 4.5 million acre feet of less water demand, thereby resulting in a net savings of water use. Urban water conservation plans are remarkably successful.
Over the last twenty years, and even with dramatic population growth, southern California has experienced no net water usage increase. And those benefits were obtained with only minimal conservation. In the next 20 years, even more dramatic conservation techniques are expected to decrease urban water demand even further.
What it all means is that the current fascination with privately owned municipal desalination, which seek to industrialize the coast and convert public resources to private profits, are unnecessary.
Moreover, Minton explained to the Commission that to make even one gallon of fresh water, using conventional desalting techniques, the result is as much as 40 more gallons of water are needed to dilute the resulting toxic salty brine waste, which is then returned to the marine environment. Worse, the energy required to convert ocean water to fresh water is tremendous, and desalination requires fully one-third more energy than is required to move water through the entire Central Valley transportation system used to move water from northern to southern California. For more information regarding the water policy work of PCL, go to
http://www.pcl.org/pcl/pcl_waterforca.asp. For more on Jonas Minton, go to http://www.pcl.org/pcl/pcl_aboutus_jminton.asp
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