From the Monterey County Herald
Serving Monterey County and the Salinas Valley

Posted on Monday, March 10, 2003

DESALINATION

County is nearly flooded with proposals for plants

By DENNIS MORAN
dmoran@montereyherald.com

Seawater desalination has been the most talked-about but least-implemented solution to California's water problems.

That could soon change. Though only a few small desal plants are operating along the coast, many more are now in various stages of planning. With more than a dozen plants in the works, regulators worry that there could be too many too soon.

There are now three small desalination plants along the shores of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and in the next several years there could be as many as eight more. Each would need regulatory approval to ensure minimal impact on the environment, but regulators say looking at each proposal individually may not be enough.

"We want to get away from looking at these proposals independently of each other," said Rachel Saunders, spokeswoman for the marine sanctuary. "Our concern is that there is a proliferation of desal plants, which might have cumulative impacts. We'd like to get ahead of the curve in developing a more proactive and regional approach to evaluate this issue."

The sanctuary has put together a group of scientists, business people, environmentalists and regulators from various agencies to come up with guidelines on the planning and regulation of desal plants. One possible recommendation is that those who want desal plants combine their efforts with others where possible in order to reduce cumulative environmental impacts, Saunders said.

In some cases, desalination plants are proposed out of environmental concerns, to take the pressure off overdrafted rivers and aquifers. But they raise a number of environmental concerns of their own, such as how to dispose of the hyper-salty brine left over after desalting seawater. If put back in the sea undiluted, the heavy brine sinks and can kill bottom-dwelling marine organisms.

For that reason, the nation's largest desalination plant, in Tampa Bay, Fla., recently opened next to a power plant so that the brine can be diluted with water used to cool the power plant's turbines.

That plant was an example that led to a state proposed last summer that a desal plant to provide drinking water for the Monterey Peninsula be put next to the Duke Energy power plant in Moss Landing. The plant uses about a billion gallons of seawater daily to cool its turbines, which officials say would be more than enough to adequately dilute the desal plant's brine discharges.

However, a court challenge may force Duke to change its cooling system to one that recycles water instead of taking in and discharging it every day. Duke's state permit for its cooling system was successfully challenged in court last year by environmentalists who claimed that the daily intake of water kills large volumes of tiny sea life at the bottom of the Elkhorn Slough food chain.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board will reconsider its permit for the Duke cooling system in May. If Duke is forced to change the system, "that would have a lot of impact on the decision to build a desalination plant there," said Matt Thompson, water resource control engineer with the regional board who is involved with issuing permits for desal plants.

Another concern raised by the jump in desalination proposals is the potential impact on growth.

Population growth and development along California's coast has always been limited by the lack of water. With water so scarce, and desalination previously seen as prohibitively expensive, the hot-button issue of growth rarely even gets a full hearing.

Improving technology has brought desalination costs down. It's still significantly more expensive than traditional water sources, but may be considered more reliable as seawater intrusion threatens coastal aquifers and limits tighten on draws from rivers.

The ocean has increasingly been considered by communities as a virtually unlimited potential supply. With unlimited supply, possibilities for growth are also unlimited.

"The growth issue is a big one," said Tom Luster, environmental analyst with the California Coastal Commission. "If (new desal plants) all involve some degree of growth, that would change the way the coast is developed over the years."

The Coastal Commission is one of the agencies that issues permits for desal plants, and is likely to look at potential growth-inducing effects of plant proposals.

The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, which must authorize permits from both the commission and the regional water board, does not have a mandate to directly address the growth question, Saunders said, but it can encourage others to begin thinking about it.

"It is up to local jurisdictions to ensure that a proliferation of desalination facilities does not lead to unsustainable community growth, through responsible planning and limitations in plant capacities," according to a sanctuary-issued paper on desalination.

Two desal plants are proposed to provide drinking water for Peninsula residents, but their proponents have pointedly said that neither will provide for future growth. The California-American Water Co. wants to build the Moss Landing desal plant, and the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District is studying a desal plant for Sand City.

It's unlikely that both will be built, because they have the same goal: to satisfy a state order that Cal-Am take much less water from the Carmel River.

That should be done as quickly as possible and addressing the growth question would slow down the projects, proponents say.

Three desal plants are in operation within the sanctuary: The Monterey Bay Aquarium has one that produces about 40,000 gallons daily for maintenance use; Duke Energy's Moss Landing power plant desalts about a half-million gallons daily for use in its boilers; and the Marina Coast Water District produces about 450,000 gallons daily in order to provide about 13 percent of the drinking water for Marina and Fort Ord residents.

So far, so good in terms of environmental impacts, said Thompson of the Regional Water Quality Control Board. "We have observed no significant impacts from the existing desalination facilities in Monterey Bay," he said.

The Marina plant is one of the very few plants in operation that provides public drinking water, says Richard Youngblood, conservation coordinator for the Marina Coast Water District. The plant -- which discharges its brine in injection wells in the beach, where it's diluted before it gets to the sea -- is often visited by representatives of communities from Hawaii to Texas that are looking into desal plants, Youngblood said.

Of the area's proposed plants, the farthest along is one that would provide water for Ocean View Plaza on Cannery Row. The Monterey City Council has approved an environmental study of the plant, and Thompson said he expects to receive an application for a permit soon.

Another proposal that's fairly far along is a plant to provide drinking water for Sand City residents. That project is undergoing required environmental reviews, said Steve Matarazzo, the city's community development director.

The $4 million to $5 million plant "could be online in as soon as two years," and would provide for present needs and for development anticipated in the city's general plan, he said.

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Dennis Moran can be reached at 646-4348.