As a result of the severe pressures that the drought has placed on California’s water supply, many are looking for new ways to meet the state’s water demands. Some observers see desalination plants, which take in ocean water or brackish water and remove the salt and other minerals to create potable water, as a potential solution for water-strapped communities, particularly coastal towns with access to seawater. However, others have pointed to the high costs, enormous energy demands and corresponding greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental impacts of desalination as persuasive reasons to limit California’s reliance on such plants.

To better understand the complexities of such a contentious issue, members of the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic traveled to Monterey and joined over 30 representatives from NGOs, government agencies, private industry, and research institutions to participate in the Uncommon Dialogue: Marine and Coastal Impacts of Desalination in California. Stanford University Woods Institute for the Environment: Water in the West, the Center for Ocean Solutions, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Nature Conservancy co-hosted the event, which focused on providing an opportunity to exchange information and have an open discussion on the best available science, technology, and policy on marine and coastal impacts of desalination projects in California.

A Tale of Two Proposed Desalination Plants

The group discussed how the different siting, design, and regulatory processes of various proposed desalination plants will greatly influence the severity of environmental impacts. For example, California-American Water Company (Cal-Am) has proposed a small desalination facility to serve customers in its Monterey District service area.  As a regulated investor-owned utility, Cal-Am is required to provide evidence to the California Public Utilities Commission of the need for additional water to show that the size and costs of the new plant are justified before it may begin construction on any new facility.  As a result of these requirements, the size of the plant is tailored to the need. Cal-Am has proposed a plant that will produce between 6.4 and 9.6 million gallons per day (mgd) to replace water that it can no longer get from the Carmel River and Seaside Groundwater Basin due to recent legal decisions.

In contrast, Poseidon Water (Poseidon) has proposed a 50 mgd desalination plant in Huntington Beach, more than five times the size of Cal-Am’s proposed facility. As a private company, Poseidon does not have to demonstrate need for the project under existing law, which means the size of the project is instead largely driven by profit motives.  In addition, while Cal-Am’s plant will use subsurface intakes (meaning they draw in seawater from below the ocean floor), the Huntington Beach facility currently plans to use open ocean intakes, which are much more harmful to marine life because they suck in and kill fish larvae and other animals that form the foundation of marine life. The Coastal Commission staff estimates that, because of its scale and intake technology, the Huntington Beach facility would annually kill more than 80 million fish larvae, eggs, and invertebrates along 100 miles of the Southern California coast, including a number of Marine Protected Areas.

All of these impacts also implicate decisions about where to site potential projects.  For example, the site of the Huntington Beach facility was determined largely by the desire to co-locate with an existing power plant to reduce costs, despite flood risks and environmental impacts. To counter this, California should consider developing a statewide plan on where to site desalination projects, if at all, based on a holistic assessment of environmental impacts, need, costs, and flood risks.

The Road Ahead

In light of the numerous desalination plants being proposed along California’s coast, the State Water Resources Control Board recently approved a desalination amendment to the Ocean Plan to address these issues. How the new requirements will be implemented and enforced remains an open question and will surely be a battleground for environmentalists. Poseidon, for one, is rushing to beat the clock, seeking to secure all the requisite permits for its Huntington Beach facility before the state has hammered out how to implement the amendment.

Ultimately, the Uncommon Dialogue gave clinic students Elizabeth Vissers (JD-MS ‘17) and John Ugai (JD ‘17) an opportunity to quickly learn about the complicated debate on the role desalination will play in California’s future water supply and to better understand the perspectives and concerns of varying stakeholders. This new knowledge will be vital in helping the students represent clients who are grappling with the environmental issues implicated by desalination in their own communities.