Desalination: Pro/Con

The disadvantages and advantages of desalination are constantly debated. I have listed the most important pros and cons for desalination below.

Disadvantages: 

• As I mentioned in my last post, desalination is an expensive process. The Charles Meyer desalination plant will cost the district a large amount of money to reactivate and operate the facility. For exact costs, take a look at my last blog post. 
• Desalination is a high energy process. The average desalination plant uses about 2 kilowatt hours of electricity to produce a cubic meter of drinking water. To generate this energy, fossil fuels are often used. This is clearly harmful to the environment and is adding to the climate change problem. Some desalination plants harness solar energy, but I doubt that the district will spend further money to install solar power into the Charles Meyer desalination plant. 
• The waste of the desalination plant, which is often called brine, is loaded with salt and chemicals used in treatment such as chlorine. When this waste is dumped back into the ocean, environmental problems can arise. The brine poisons some animals and can create entire dead zones in the ocean.

At the beginning of this blog, I said that I wanted to create an unbiased guide to the desalination decision. I just listed some very strong disadvantages for desalination. Don't get discouraged! Desalination may not have many advantages, but they are strong positives. 

Advantages: 

• Simply put, Santa Barbara needs the water. The ocean is extremely vast and provides a drought proof source of water. Reverse Osmosis treatment provides a clean high quality water. The desalination provides a stable source of clean water. Santa Barbara needs this. 
• Desalination gives other freshwater sources a reprieve. For example, It helps prevent groundwater over-drafting, simply by having a new source of water. 

My Opinion: 

You may not want my opinion on desalination, but I am going to tell you it just once. After this post, I will only state the facts and I will attempt to remove my bias from all other posts. I do not really approve of desalination. I think that a lot of times it hurts the environment more than it helps the community. It should not be a primary source of water for many districts. For example, placing a desalination plant in Seattle, Washington would be disastrous. However, there are many cases in which desalination is imperative. Freshwater is not as accessible to many people. While Seattle is abundant in water, other locations are not. It would be absurd to shame the United Arab Emirates for their use of desalination because they lack access to freshwater from other sources. I understand the use of desalination in the UAE and I understand the need for desalination in Santa Barbara. Sure, it is expensive, not necessarily environmentally friendly and it requires a large amount of energy, but Santa Barbara needs a stable source of high quality water and desalination is the solution. 

How Much will this Cost?

Now we have come to the question that everyone has been asking: how much will this desalination facility cost? Desalination is notorious for being an expensive solution to water problems, so it is no surprise that the people of Santa Barbara are concerned by the reactivation of the Charles Meyer Desalination Facility. It will cost $17.7 million to reactivate the plant, estimated by Carollo Engineers. $2.5 million will be needed for system improvements would also be need for the the entire water system. The operating costs are going to be around $1,470 per acre feet. This will work out to approximately $5 million per year. It appears likely that the city will have to consider grants or loans for the reactivation costs. More importantly, how will this desalination plant affect your water bills? Unfortunately, that information is not available to us at this point in time. The City of Santa Barbara has stated on their drought website that as the project continues, "a study will be completed and shared with the Council that will help to understand the financial impacts the desalination facility will have on monthly water bills." When the study is released, I will make sure to summarize it on this blog and post a link.

All of this information can, again, be found in more detail in the City of Santa Barbara Long-Term Water Supply Plan. The report can be found here: http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=34152

How will the Facility Fit into the Water Plan

Santa Barbara City Hall

When the Charles Meyer Desalination Facility was originally built, the capacity of the plant was 7,500 acre feet per year with a maximum hydraulic capacity of 10,000 AFY. However, while the facility was placed in long-term storage mode, a portion of the facility was sold to Saudi Arabia's Kindasa Water Services and shipped to Jeddah. Now, the Charles Meyer Desalination Facility production capacity is now a maximum of 3,125 AFY. 3,125 AFY would approximately be about 20% of annual water demands. Theoretically, the plant could be expanded to its original capacity if the city finds that it is needed.
All of this information can also be found in the City of Santa Barbara Long-Term Water Supply Plan (2011)  http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=34152

Charles Meyer Desalination Plant Background Information

Santa Barbara Pier 

Finally, I shall begin to discuss the Charles Meyer Desalination Plant. The plant facility was originally built in 1991 in response to a five year long drought. The $34 million facility was actually never used for anything but test runs. Shortly after construction was completed, the miracle march rains began. This gave the city enough freshwater supplies to manage county's water without the desalination facility. Now, the desalination facility, that has been dormant for 22 years, may be reopened. The city of Santa Barbara is concerned about the current drought and some believe that the desalination plant would offer a more reliable and drought-resistant source of water. In 2011, the City of Santa Barbara released a long-term water supply plan. In this plan, the city is advised by the Water Resources Division and Public Works Department of Santa Barbara to reactivate the Charles Meyer Plant in the event of a six year drought. 2014 marks the third year of a drought and since the desalination facility would need two years to reactivate, the city must make a decision soon. In the next few blog posts, I will discuss more important facts about the Charles Meyer Desalination Plant. A short profile of the desalination facility can be found on the City of Santa Barbara website:
 http://civicaweb.santabarbaraca.gov/gov/depts/pw/resources/system/sources/desalination.asp

How do Desalination Plants Work?

Reverse Osmosis Process

Now that we have a better understanding of what a desalination plant is, we can discuss how the plants work. There are several different ways that a desalination plant can operate. I will discuss the two most common methods: vacuum distillation and reverse osmosis. Vacuum distillation is, simply put, where the water is boiled at a less than atmospheric pressure and the waste in the water is distilled and evaporated. The other common method of desalination is reverse osmosis. The concept of the method is relatively simple. The water is pushed through a semipermeable membrane. The membrane works as a filtration system that catches the undesirable molecules and ions in the water. This process is often seen in water recycling plants as well. Reverse Osmosis can create potable water that could be used as drinking water. The Charles Meyer Desalination plant in Santa Barbara currently is equipped to use the Reverse Osmosis water filtration system.

What is a desalination plant?

Typical desalination plant

The most important thing to know about a desalination plant is what it is. I am sure that many of you already have some gasp on what a desalination plant is, so I will also supply some important desalination facts in this post. Essentially, a desalination plant is a facility that is created to remove salt and other minerals from seawater. The water produced from a desalination plant can be used from anything from agriculture to drinking water. There are about 15,000 desalination plants around the world, but these plants only produce less than one percent of the total world consumption. Most of these plants are found in the Middle East and North Africa, but the United States owns about 250 plants. Desalination is a sensible option for countries or cities that struggle with drought because desalination plants do not depend on the amount of precipitation for the year. California, and by extent Santa Barbara, is a prime location for desalination plants because the state is constantly struggling with water scarcity and droughts.

The Ball is Rolling!

On May 6th, yesterday, the City of Santa Barbara council was addressed by the Santa Clara Water Resources Division and Public works department. The departments were discussing the "contract for preliminary design services for recommissioning the Charles Meyer Desalination Facility." Essentially, they wanted the council to allow the Public Works department to create a City Professional Services Contract. This contract essentially allows the department to approve any of the expenditures that the engineers working on the facility may need. They also asked for a City Attorney to offer legal services to the project. The three phases of the project were also discussed. The three phases are study, performance specification and proposal/bid evaluation. In phase 1, "Study," capacity alternatives, distribution analysis, facility inspection, detailed cost estimates, detailed project schedule and more will be discussed and conducted. In addition, in this phase there will be discussions with the Coastal Commission, the Regional Water Quality Control Board, Carollo Engineers and the city staff. In phase 2, "Performance Specification," a performance specification contract will be developed and contractors will submit proposals to design, construct and operate the facility. In the final phase 3, "Proposal/Bid Evaluation," the bid evaluation criteria will be developed and questions about the bid will be evaluated. The council will be updated on each phase as they occur.

If you would like a to learn more on this meeting, I found this information on the City of Santa Barbara website. There is a 40 minute video of the council meeting that this information was presented at. The video can be found here: http://santabarbara.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=2254dba7-2e94-1032-adea-d6531c949325

I imagine the video will be rather dull if you are not extremely interested in the desalination decision. For those of you who don't wish to spend 40 minutes watching the video, there is a Council Agenda Report. This report essentially has all the information stated in the video and is only five quick pages. Enjoy:
http://www.santabarbaraca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?BlobID=40947