CA - A celebrity-studded L.A. water district has a very big drought idea: Seafloor desalination
A water district best known for supplying the celebrity-studded enclaves of Calabasas and Hidden Hills could soon become famous for a very different reason.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District recently partnered with California-based OceanWell to study the feasibility of harvesting drinking water from desalination pods placed on the ocean floor, several miles off the coast of California.
The pilot project, which will begin in Las Virgenes’ reservoir near Westlake Village, hopes to establish the nation’s first-ever “blue water farm.”
The company says that by combining desalination with off-shore energy technology, it can solve many of the challenges associated with traditional, land-based desalination, including high energy costs and salty byproducts that threaten marine life. The process could produce as much as 10 million gallons of fresh water per day — a significant gain for an inland district almost entirely reliant on imported supplies.
“It gives us a sense of long-term water reliability, but it also gives us the idea that we can really start weathering the storms, if you will, when it comes to climate change impacts, and specifically droughts,” said Mike McNutt, a spokesman for Las Virgenes. “This can be a game changer for Las Virgenes, but it could be a game changer for any water agency anywhere.”
Local environmental groups said the concept seems promising, but not without downsides.
“Our policy is that ocean desalination should always be the last resort,” said Charming Evelyn, chair of the Sierra Club’s water committee in Southern California. “Water is not an infinite resource. It is extremely finite, and the ocean is not something we just get to dip a large straw in and pull whatever we want out, because even the ocean has to maintain a balance.”
The traditional desalination process pumps seawater from coastal areas into facilities on land, where the water is pushed through fine membranes and filters to remove salt and other materials. The process is energy intensive — often fueled by greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels — and produces a thick, briny sludge on the back-end that is typically released back into the ocean. Studies have shown the concentrated brine can be harmful to marine life.
