CA eyes rules before 'plunge into desalination'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/sep/26/drought-carlsbad-poseidon-california-water/?#article-copy



Construction of the Carlsbad Desalination Project by Poseidon Water, is on schedule, slated to be open and operating November of 2015. The plant will supply 7-10% of the water supply to San Marcos via underground pipes. Carlsbad Desalination Project is predicted to be, at 50-million gallons per day, the largest, most technologically advanced and energy-efficient seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.

CA eyes rules before 'plunge into desalination'
Chris Nichols6:22 p.m.Sept. 26, 2014

SACRAMENTO — As California increasingly considers desalination to ease its water shortage, regulators are creating statewide standards to protect marine life from the harmful effects posed by desalination facilities, more than a dozen of which are proposed along the California coast.

The purpose of the rules is to minimize the loss of sea life when the plants suck in ocean water for treatment. The plants pull in plankton, fish eggs and larvae, all of which is killed during the process. The rules would also cover the impacts of brine, the salty byproduct of desalination which is spewed back into the sea.

The standards would affect all new or expanded desalination plants in California.





The State Water Resources Control Board is developing the rules, which could be adopted by the regulatory agency as early as this fall. The framework will include monitoring and reporting requirements for the impacts on marine life. Officials say it will create a level playing field for the state’s many regional water boards as those agencies consider approving desalination plants in coming years.

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A little further down in the article states " The $1 billion venture is headed by Poseidon, a private firm that’s partnered with the county water authority on the project."

Public & private, eh?

Did you guys ever look at the Melborne desalinization plant?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_desalination

Cost

The capital cost for the project was initially estimated to be $2.9 billion in the initial feasibility study, this was later revised to $3.1 billion[25] and then to $3.5 billion. After the winning bidder was announced it was revised to $4 billion.

..

Do you seriously think this thing will be built for a billion bucks?

[hunter]

1. Burning fossil fuels to desalinate sea water is a terrible idea.

These plants will be powered by coal and fracked gas, poisoning the groundwater elsewhere, and adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that will make droughts worse.

The only realistic way to calculate the cost of water from these plants would be a requirement that they use 100% non-fossil fuel energy. The nuclear power plant at San Onofre is shut down so this plant in Carlsbad doesn't even have that going for it.

If the people in Southern California want to do desalinization the right way, they'd best be covering their parking lots and roofs with solar cells, and they'd best be building pumped energy storage systems utilizing the fresh water produced so the desalinization plant itself could be run as near to full time as possible.

Would people want to pay that much for water? Probably not. It might be a better idea to halt further development and say good-bye to the desert oasis landscaping and golf course culture.

If the plant depends on fossil fuels then the users of it's water will be selfishly harming people and degrading the environment worldwide for their own pleasure.

Four billion dollars doesn't cover the true cost of this. Doing it right, without using fossil fuels, would easily cost three times that amount and include the installation of enough solar and wind generators to power the thing, along with the construction of large lower and higher elevation reservoirs to balance the energy demands of the desalinization plant with the fluctuating energy production of the renewable energy sources.

The map of existing desalinization plants in California is a little misleading. Most of them are very much smaller plants, and some of them supply only a small fraction of the water used by the communities that built them and are essentially kept operative for emergency use because of prohibitive energy costs.

If I recall correctly, of the three desalinization plants in Monterey Bay, one is a smaller scale community plant that isn't used much (like the plant in Santa Barbara,) one is essentially run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium as both a demonstration/research project, and to reduce the Aquarium's impact on local overly stretched water supplies, and one supplies fresh water for the monster gas fired power plant. Further plans for desalinization have been mired in political controversy for decades now.

[nationalize the fed]

2. Desalination naysayers need only look to Australia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and

the rest of the world. If it's a bad idea someone should tell them not to waste their money.

Israel:

Israel Desalination Enterprises' Sorek Desalination Plant in Palmachim provides up to 26,000 m³ of potable water per hour (2.300 m³ p.a.). At full capacity, it is the largest desalination plant of its kind in the world. Once unthinkable, given Israel's history of drought and lack of available fresh water resource, with desalination, Israel can now actually produce a surplus of fresh water

By 2014, Israel's desalination programs provided roughly 35% of Israel's drinking water and it is expected to supply 40% by 2015 and 70% by 2050

Saudi Arabia:

The Saline Water Conversion Corporation of Saudi Arabia provides 50% of the municipal water in the Kingdom, operates a number of desalination plants, and has contracted $1.892 billion to a Japanese-South Korean consortium to build a new facility capable of producing a billion liters per day, opening at the end of 2013. They currently operate 32 plants in the Kingdom; one example at Shoaiba cost $1.06 billion and produces 450 million liters per day.

Corniche RO Plant (Crop) (operated by SAWACO)
Jubail 800,000 m3/day[122]
North Obhor Plant (operated by SAWACO)
Rabigh 7,000 m3/day (operated by wetico)
planned for completion 2018 Rabigh II 600,000 m3/day (under construction Saline Water Conversion Corporation)[123]
Shuaibah III 150,000 m3/day (operated by Doosan)
South Jeddah Corniche Plant (SOJECO) (operated by SAWACO)
Yanbu Multi Effect Distillation (MED), Saudi Arabia 68,190 m3/day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination#Existing_facilities_and_facilities_under_construction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_desalination_in_Australia

MIT: Cheap Drinking Water from the Ocean

Carbon nanotube-based membranes will dramatically cut the cost of desalination.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/405927/cheap-drinking-water-from-the-ocean/page/1/

^If our scientists were working on a Manhattan type scale on ways to cut the costs of Desalination instead of surveillance devices and next generation drones maybe some real progress could be made

Do you seriously think this thing will be built for a billion bucks?

Spending a few billion dollars (once) to insure that CA or TX never needs to worry about a drought again seems like a pretty good deal. Better than dropping a few trillion dollars on bombing and invading lands 8,000 miles away. Bonus: Jobs for unemployed Americans.

The US has ALREADY DROPPED 3/4 of a BILLION DOLLARS on the New Big Threat: ISIS or ISIL or whatever the F the Con Men are calling these people. And some of these warmongers say this New War will go on for decades. Pure INSANITY!



http://costofwar.com <--- watching the numbers click up is watching your children's and their children's future dribble away.

[hunter]

3. Are those nations we ought to emulate? I don't think so.

Yes, I do believe desalinization is a waste of money and the most adverse environmental consequences fall upon those who receive no benefit from the water, especially when fossil fuels are used to power these plants.

The people of coastal Southern California get the desalinated water, and people elsewhere have their own fresh water contaminated by coal mining and fracking, and they suffer the more adverse consequences of climate change.

Does that seem fair?

Yes desalinization is better than dropping bombs on people but that's a pretty low standard to measure things by.

It would be wonderful if the coastal communities of Southern California were self sufficient in water. Many of them are quite wealthy because lower income people were forced out decades ago. I remember when inexpensive Southern California beach apartment in sketchy neighborhoods were easy to find. I lived in such places.

If I was making the rules for desalinization plants I'd demand that solar power and and storage capacity be installed simultaneously with the desalinization plant.

It's an elegant system. When the sun is shining brightly it powers the desalinization plant and pumps the fresh water up to high elevation reservoirs. When the sun is not shining, the desalinization plant is powered by water flowing down to lower elevations, either for distribution or into a lower elevation reservoirs.

It's the only fair way to do it. Expensive, but fair. Otherwise the community operating a desalinization plant is simply leaching off the rest of humanity.

I've no tolerance for wealthy bloodsuckers and vampire economic systems.