In the News
SANTA CRUZ BEGINS TESTING A WATER DESALINATION PLANT
By Karina Rusk
abcnews.com, 03/20/2008
The ocean is
being viewed as the best bet for two water agencies in
"So we really
need to find in the City of
This wrench twisting took the place
of a traditional ribbon cutting for a desalination pilot plant. The
$4 million dollar facility is located at Long Marine Laboratory. The
technology has been tested elsewhere, but not in
"They need to
test the water they are actually going to be desalinating. They just
can't take the results of someone else or the results would not be
tailored to their specific needs," said
The concept is
simple, turn saltwater into drinking water. The process is
complicated involving a number of treatments, filtration systems and
reverse osmosis; in which high pressure pumps force the water
through membranes, to squeeze out salt and other minerals.
Even though the
water generated from the pilot project is pure enough to drink, it
will only be used for testing and research.
There are a
number of environmental concerns from how to best dispose of the
salty bi-product, to how to reduce the energy use it takes to run a
desal plant. No one wants to solve a water crisis by adding to
global warming.
"The bottom
line is that if we can't find a way to address them, we're going to
be in big trouble because I don't know where we'll go next, but we
won't be building a plant that is going to destroy the local
environment," said Councilmember Rotkin.
The test plant
treats up to 50 gallons of seawater a minute. A fully operational
site would produce 2 1/2 million gallons of water a day, a reality
that's still at least seven years away.
"We won't see a
drop of water out of this plant until 2015, so it's going to be a
long process with a lot of steps, but it's exciting because it's the
first big step down that road," said Bruce Daniels from the Soquel
Creek Water District.
The pilot project lasts for one year.