In the News
THE GREAT DESAL TASTE TEST
Item in Nūz:
It wasn't high
tech, and the panelists weren't professionals. But it was blind, and
everyone who was involved drinks water, so we figured our office
taste test of water from the pilot desalination plant counted for
something. Besides, we wanted to know what the future will taste
like when the environmental apocalypse robs us of fresh water,
leaving us dependent on liberating seawater from its component
salts. Should we plan on bringing lemon and cucumber slices to that
party?
With help from
Jaime the intern, who set up the tasting and was the only one to
know which water was which, four of us assembled to taste water from
a variety of sources: an unfiltered Santa Cruz tap, bottled water
from Pure Water of Santa Cruz, Fiji purchased at Trader Joe's and
the pilot plant's desalinated water, couriered that very morning via
Nalgene from the lobby of the Santa Cruz Water Department. We
tasted, we swished, we made faces, we took notes. And the winners
emerged:
Not a ringing
endorsement of the water source hailed as
To Nūz, it
tasted more like tap water than tap water itself, which, believe it
or not, spells success to the folks at the Water Department. "It
does taste a lot like tap water," says desalination program
coordinator
There's a good
reason for that: in some neighborhoods, desal could almost
completely replace tap water. Luckenbach explains that if the city
of Santa Cruz and the Soquel Creek Water District were to go in on a
full-scale desal plant, the neighborhoods closest to the actual
plant (which would most likely be on the Westside) would have a lot
of desal flowing out their taps; farther away in the joint water
system--think Aptos--there would be little if any desalinated water
in the mix. Nevertheless, the plant's 2.5 million-gallon-a-day
output would be helping the district stave off saltwater intrusion,
a serious problem in midcounty since demand outstrips supply by
about 15 percent. And during drought, the plant could help the city
of
But that's all
a big if. The pilot plant at Long Marine Lab runs until April 13, at
which point the big heads get together and figure out how to deal
with touchy environmental issues like where to place the intake
pipes in the ocean and how to dispose of the brine left over after
the desal process. Luckenbach says that by summertime the city and
the district should have some answers for the public, as well as
information on costs and energy required to run a full-scale plant.
For now and
through April 13, city and district water customers can satisfy
their curiosity by tasting the desalinated drink for themselves.
Coolers of it are available, with little paper cups, in the Santa
Cruz Water Department lobby,