Hello.

Thanks for joining us for sustaining us here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.

Water is to California.

What oxygen is to humans.

The Golden State cannot survive without water with a seemingly perpetual drought upon us.

Our drought plague state has often been compared to the driest of regions places like Israel, other parts of the Middle East, even Australia.

The idea that California is this tropical oasis, well, that's just a mirage.

California is a desert.

A few years ago, state officials finally declared the decades old drought over.

Well, we all know now they spoke too soon because the state of California is in another extreme drought emergency and we must have water.

The question is, without much rain and limited supply, where are parts of California going to get that water?

We travel to Orange County, California, to find out.

The World Ocean is a massive body of saltwater that encompasses about 70% of the Earth's surface.

The Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern Ocean.

About 97% of all the Earth's water can be found in the ocean as opposed to, say, for example, lakes or rivers.

And less than 1% of all the Earth's water is freshwater, the lifeblood of humans.

To say that's a lot of water, well, that's like saying there are a lot of people in the world.

What if that water could be used as fresh drinking water for our world?

In 2015, we built the largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere in San Diego County.

Scott Maloney is the vice president of Poseidon Water.

Poseidon Water is a private company located in Carlsbad, California, beside and is in the business of financing and developing water infrastructure projects.

In this case, desal Venetian projects in Southern California.

Desalination or desal, as it's known, is at its most basic.

Taking the salt out of the seawater to produce fresh water.

And since 2015, POSEIDON'S billion dollar Carlsbad desalination plant has been doing just that.

We have produced 70 billion gallons of locally controlled, high quality drought proof drinking water.

The facility has been able to operate reliably through wildfires, COVID pandemic, rolling blackouts.

It is the most reliable source of drinking water in San Diego County.

Desal water is also a reliable source of water throughout some parts of the world, as evidenced in places like drought plagued Israel and Australia, for example.

Poseidon knows that.

So following the success of the Carlsbad desal plant, the Poseidon Water Company is trying to build another billion dollar desalination plant in Huntington Beach, California.

The Huntington Beach plan was originally introduced about 20 years ago when Poseidon began launching their Carlsbad project.

However, company officials say they eventually decided to just target Carlsbad and then when that plant was perfected, they could begin the ambitious goal of building another plant in Surf City, USA.

The proposed new Huntington Beach desalination plant is slated to be built out here, co-located with a recently rebuilt AEC power plant.

This land that houses the power plant located on Pacific Coast Highway near the famed Huntington Beach Pier, is one of the rare coastal parcels that is already zoned for industrial use.

And Poseidon intends to get rid of these old abandoned oil tanks that sit out here on the north end of the property and replace them with their new desalination plant.

Except, unlike Carlsbad and the Huntington Beach desal plant has been a slow and too labor intensive process to get this project online due to stricter coastal rules and regulations.

Carlsbad is now proof that the concept works, the technology works, and we're very optimistic that the state will give us the final approvals to build the proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant.

Since we successfully permitted and built Carlsbad, the state of California has adopted new environmental regulations that essentially has put the Huntington Beach project back at the starting line for obtaining the permits and approvals to build the facility.

This year we expect to obtain the final permits from the state and start construction in 2022.

The process step aside and like other desal plants used to convert the salty ocean water into fresh drinking water is known as reverse osmosis or R0.

This is the engine of the desalination system.

The way the Huntington Beach Seawater Desalination Facility will work is it will employ the the technology of choice around the world, which is reverse osmosis.

What that simply means is that we'll be forcing seawater through membranes that have holes 100 million times smaller than the diameter of a human air.

The only molecule I can fit through those membranes is water.

Poseidon says not even bacteria, viruses or salt molecules can get through.

And while desalination and of this process has several critics, mostly environmentalists, who claim reverse osmosis, can kill various types of ocean and marine life and harm the environment, Maloney and The Poseidon Company say the new Huntington Beach facility is going to be using the most high tech science, so the environment is not compromised.

The Huntington Beach seawater Desalination Plant will be the most technologically advanced, energy efficient and environmentally friendly desalination plant in the world.

We will have the state of the art seawater intake technology that will minimize environmental impacts.

The plant will be outfitted with energy recovery devices that will reduce the energy consumption by 50%.

And finally, even though the facility does not produce any emissions.

The facility will be 100% carbon neutral by offsetting the emissions associated with our purchase of electricity off the grid.

Those are unprecedented commitments that have not been seen anywhere around the world.

Anything that you have to obtain externally by a process is going to cost something.

Shane Ardagh was a chemist in Orange County, California.

Arto is an associate professor of chemistry at UC Irvine.

His research team at UCI is launching new studies about desalination and how this process could be used to help farmers and other industries that require a lot of water.

Arto acknowledges that desalinated water is a bit more costly than other water.

For example, with the Poseidon Carlsbad desalination plant.

Water bills for the San Diego County customers increased on average about $4 per month.

In Orange County, customers there are also going to have about the same cost increase if desalination from the Huntington Beach plant is added to Orange County's water portfolio.

Independent experts estimate it costs increase of about 3 to $5 per month for the average water bill.

Nevertheless, Pardo makes the case for desal and the added cost.

What is the minimum thing we as humans need to live by?

What is What's the first thing you need that if you don't have, you're in trouble, right?

We need oxygen.

You know, oxygen for a couple of minutes.

We're in trouble, Right?

And so thank goodness oxygen is free, right?

As of today on Earth, oxygen is free.

Great.

So we have to pay for it.

We don't care what it costs.

What?

Second, what's the next thing we need to live?

Water.

When you water?

Well, what are not free doesn't just fall out of the sky enough for us to drink.

Right?

And so it's something we have to pay for.

I think the fact that we're getting water from different sources and now it's changing what our baseline, you know, status quo of the water cost is, is the reason we're noticing that it may be costing slightly more.

Right.

Because to get like runoff from the mountains down the stream, have the water show up at our house is less expensive than driving reverse osmosis, for example, at the beach or even driving it remotely.

But it's not that much more expensive.

If people are critical, that water's too expensive.

Let me give you a challenge.

Use less water.

Right.

I mean, how much water do people use on average in a big metropolitan city?

I think the number is something like a thousand liters per day.

You need less than 5% of that to live.

So go with your 5% and make other changes to your life so that you don't use as much water.

Sunny Zhang is a colleague of Shane Erdos.

Zhang also is a professor at UC Irvine and she is the chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UCI.

Professor Zhang studies desalination and shares her research here in California and throughout the world.

Professor Zhang agrees with Arto and beside in Scott Moloney that desal is a good and viable option for water supply.

Well, I look at all the water we have here.

We are really always talking about we are running out of water, but we're right here at the ocean front and then we are able to convert those water into pure drinking water.

It's no different than water recycling water capturing water reuse.

We're doing all of those.

And you see very large plans being built in Israel.

And then they are sustaining a very large portion of the water supply in Israel and many other countries in the Middle Eastern area where they have water stress.

And then the unfortunately in California is new and there's a lot of concerned about a lot of different issues.

So the permitting process has slowed desalination process quite a bit.

There is a lot of misunderstanding actually about ocean desalination and environmental issues that are going about and where are sucking up baby fish, juvenile fish, while we are doing our water production from reservoirs where doing nothing different, we are all sucking up the water from a water intake.

Lakes and reservoirs also have a juvenile fish, and so those are considerations are a little bit sort of a misunderstanding.

And then there is a lot of effort have been putting into trying to make the intake technology as environmentally friendly as possible.

And about the added cost of desal water.

Professor Zhang says having a reliable drought proof source is worth the extra money spent.

Yeah, critics sinking the water from desalination on ocean water is too expensive.

It's true.

It's more expensive in comparison with, say, surface water.

But the problem here is you don't have enough surface water.

Look at California.

We are in kind of a semi desert and we are getting water from everywhere.

Right.

And we're getting it from northern California, from Colorado River.

And eventually those water are being demanded by other communities.

If you're looking for long term reliable solutions for water supply in the Southern California area, you want to be self-sustainable.

You need to look at a technology or approach.

Gave you a long term reliability.

I can't invest a lot of money to build another canal or getting more water agreement with someone else, but I don't know how long that going to last.

And this ocean water is the supply that you are not being limited.

So Southern California is a semi-arid region and we have to import over half of our water supply.

And Orange County in Southern California.

Seawater Desalination offers Southern California a 100% climate resilient water supply as the state of California prepares for climate change.

It's essential that we embrace new technologies like seawater desalination, local high quality, climate resilient water.

Now, Poseidon Water submitted its coastal development permit application to the Coastal Commission back in July of 2021, upon approval.

Construction of a new project could begin in late 2022.

Joining me now to discuss all of this further is Vic Leipzig.

Vic is a former Huntington Beach mayor, former city council member.

He served on the Huntington Beach Planning Commission, has been involved with several environmental organizations like Bolsa Chica Conservancy, the Audubon Society, and Vic has his Ph.D. in biology and is a proponent of desalination.

Also joining me is that gold, Zac is a marine biologist, a Stanford grad and currently a researcher at the University of Washington.

He has his Ph.D. in marine ecology from UCLA and studies the human impacts of coastal and aquatic ecosystems.

Thank you both so much for being here.

It's good to be with you today.

Vic, let's begin with you.

Why are you in favor of the desalination process turning salty ocean water into drinking water?

And then talk about why you're in favor specifically of this proposed Huntington Beach desal, a nation plan that Poseidon is hoping to build in your city, your city of Huntington Beach, world famous Surf City, USA.

I'm a strong supporter of ocean water desalination for Orange County, because Orange County today depends almost, almost entirely upon imported water supplies for its water consumption.

We get water from the Colorado River and from the Sacramento River.

Much of that water gets moved to us through the groundwater basins of Orange County, and many locals believe that much of our water coming out of the groundwater basin beneath Orange County is is in some way natural water.

But that water has to be replenished and is largely replenished by those imported supplies, which are both precarious.

It's likely to go up in price and are extremely environmentally damaging to the rivers from which that water is taken.

So a local supply of water like ocean water desalination I think is the right step.

A move in the right direction for Orange County.

Zack why do you oppose desalination?

Doesn't Vic make a good argument?

There is all that water out there.

Why not use that abundance of water?

Well, I actually I don't oppose all desal.

I just oppose desal in the ocean.

Desal and reverse osmosis technologies are really important where there's no doubt that Southern California is entering into a little bit of a drought now and that having access to safe, clean, accessible water resources is really important for Orange County and Huntington Beach.

But the problem with desal in the ocean is there's really big marine impacts on local fish communities and local ecosystems.

And so where I really see desal as the solution here is using it on groundwater, using on recycled water, it's lower energy.

And by having lower energy, that's less climate impacts and it's cheaper for ratepayers.

And so I really think that it's a win win win solution there is to use the technology.

Non-nano is not an ocean which is extremely salty, takes a lot more energy to pull more soft into that versus brackish, know, groundwater resources that we actually have plenty of and plenty of recycled water capabilities that we have in Orange County is already doing.

But we can really ramp that up to a much broader level.

Also, Zack, what is your opinion of the proposed Huntington Beach desal plant that we referenced in my field report?

You know, Huntington Beach, I mean, like I said before, I think the impacts on the local coastal ecosystems are pretty significant.

You know, there's a reason why the state of California has moved away from 1 to 3 cooling and power plants in the state.

It's because there is enormous impacts on local ecosystems.

And so that why are we going backwards in the state of California that, you know, beside the plant that's proposed here, that's millions of gallons of water per day, that's lots of fish eggs, lots of fish larvae, lots of fish, adults, you know, potentially getting entrained and impinged.

You know, the technical term for basically fish getting sucked in tubes.

And that the reason why the state moved away from these large intakes of water from coastal ecosystems is because their substantial impacts is I don't understand why we're going backwards, adding more, you know, taking more water out of the ocean when we know there's impacts to our local fisheries.

You know, obviously, Huntington Beach, Orange County, there's a lot of recreational fishermen, a lot of commercial fishing in that area.

You know, we don't need more impacts for our local ecosystems there.

With that said, Vic, as Zach mentioned, are you at all concerned about the environment being harmed in the desal process?

For example, what critics of desal and many environmentalists, even such as yourself, have claimed, is the killing of this ocean and marine life.

What are your concerns.

In one way there is will be no impact on ocean marine life in regard to adult fish.

The intake to this desalination plant will be guarded by a mesh screen of one millimeter diameter so that nothing larger than something that's just barely visible to the human.

I can be untrained or entrapped into this desal plant and the velocity at which water will be taken into the plant will be very low.

So that's that fish in the immediate proximity of this screen will not even be entrapped on the screen.

Now, fish, eggs and other marine organisms, smaller than one millimeter, will be in drain.

Yes, that's true.

But, you know, when we take water from a lake or a river like the Colorado or the Sacramento River, all of those organisms are also killed in the process of filtering and bleaching that water for human consumption.

So the same thing is true and the resources of those rivers are much more stressed than the biological resources of the ocean itself.

So impacts on the ocean are or are, and impacts on the ocean are really minor.

From a statistical point of view, the amount of water being drawn into the into the plant and the the number of aquatic organisms that are drawn into the plant is tiny relative to the resource volume that is out there.

And Zack, in addition to the environmental toll you had talked about, what are some of your other concerns about desalination and on this process, if you have any?

No, I mean, I in some ways, you know, I, I totally understand where Vic is coming from, but, you know, the problem is why why are we comparing to potentially bad options?

The better option is why are we using desal on recycled water?

Why are we using desal on groundwater that's not going to have any of these environmental impacts?

Sure, we can pick between bad options, but this is a triple win.

If you use it on recycled water.

We have no impacts not to the Colorado, not to the Sacramento Delta.

And that's like, where else do you get an economic, environmental and climate win in one go?

And so I really think we need to think about where we're getting our water from a much more holistic perspective.

Right?

And so we're really taking a step back and what is the best way we can get our water with the most environmentally friendly ways we can get our water that's also affordable?

You know, and make sure that low income communities in Orange County can afford this water.

Right?

I mean, the cheapest way is always conservation, but we're not going to buy itself.

We can't conserve our way out of the water resource needs that we need in Orange County, but we should be prioritizing that.

But after that, we should really be using these targeted desal reverse osmosis technologies on recycled water, because not only are they cheaper because it takes less energy to remove all the salt or remove any of the suspended material, it's so it's cheaper.

It means less energy, so it's less climate intensive.

Right.

Where are you going to get the energy from?

Right now, the state has really ambitious climate goals, but we get a large proportion of our energy are fossil fuel intensive.

And so that's basically adding more carbon in the atmosphere to get.

And so and I really you know, my argument, you know, I think big and I you know, in some ways we agree that there are these are environmentally.

Desal can can cause impacts on local ecosystems and they you know taking water from rivers, of course, that also impacts those ecosystems.

And we should be working towards alternatives that do the least amount of damage.

Vic, as you know, the other rap about desal is that this process is so energy intensive, they say it really takes a toll and taxes the energy grid.

Do you have concerns about that, particularly?

I'd like to respond to Zach's comments about fish impacts.

The the intake process for the Poseidon plant in Huntington Beach is planned to intake water at such a slow rate that no fish will be entrained on the grid at the mouth of zero and impacts to marine life have been shown to be insignificant.

For my environmental studies done for the Regional Water Quality Control Board for the State Lands Commission as well as for local government.

Three separate times each cited twice by those agencies.

So marine life impacts really very, very slight.

Now, really the more important issue for Orange County and really the world is the potential use of diesel.

Is is there another source of water?

Zack has mentioned groundwater where groundwater can be recycled, reclaimed, purified by desalination.

But Orange County is already tapping its groundwater basin to the max and ground, and Orange County is already tapping its reclaimed water from from urban use already to the max.

By the end of this year, the Orange County Water District, together with the Orange County Sanitation District, will be reclaiming the maximum possible amount of Orange County's sewage flow.

There is no additional reservoir of water for us in Orange County other than the ocean, and yet we are still massively dependent upon those imported sources that are so energy, energy remaining environmentally damaging and potentially cut off by policy or potentially by earthquake.

So the example that is the example set by Israel and Australia, to name a couple of countries in the world are examples that we can follow.

I've just received a couple of studies from Australia that show no impact at the mouth of ocean water desalination projects.

And Vic, as you also know, there are several water officials with various water districts.

So let's even take your area of Orange County as an example.

They've criticized desalination of water.

They say the water's way too expensive.

They could simply get their water delivery from a cheaper source, you know, from their own local water districts delivering the water to the customers.

Even the Irvine Ranch Water District told me that when we reported on desalination.

What's your opinion about.

All of that?

And that's and that's absolutely true.

Water from the Colorado River, water from the Sacramento River are cheaper, but doing things the cheap way is not always the best way.

And that water does not have the same complete reliability that ocean water would have.

That is, water that's imported to to Orange County from 200 or 300 miles away from just the portions of the state of California.

The threat for a reduction in those supplies is is real by state and federal decision making, as well as the potential for destruction of those very long and very delicate aqueduct systems.

So a local supply right here in Orange County would be a very good thing.

And the ocean is really the only local supply of water available to us in Orange County.

Our groundwater basin, while large, is simply a reservoir that needs to be replenished from some other source from outside.

Unfortunately, the world's got it is not replenished by local rainfall like many people seem to believe.

Zack to you now, if not desalination, which again many argue is such an amazing process to bring ocean water, turn it into drinking water and give the public a viable source of drinking water.

So with that said, what are some other good options for trying to capture water, which is certainly desperately needed in this drought plagued California?

What is better than desalination, I should ask, in your opinion?

Yeah, I mean, solving the water crisis in California has been an issue for it basically is like anyone has tried to live in California for the last hundred and 50 years from the state and it's a really big issue.

And I'm not going to have all the solutions.

But, you know, obviously conservation is really big and the state has demonstrated during the last drought that it can conserve water and we can use less water per capita.

You know, we have in especially in some regions in Orange County, have unbelievably high per capita water use, water consumption much higher than the rest of the country and even the rest of the state.

And we can definitely bring that down.

So what about that, Vic?

What about all these other water options?

Let's say, for example, water replenishment, water recapture during water storage, you know, things like that?

Well, I want to agree with Zack that water conservation is a tremendously important step, which should be the number one step in any prioritization list of things that water agencies and the community, the people of California can do.

But there is only so much that conservation can do for us to reduce our demand.

And in Orange County, we definitely have to reduce our demand that we put on the State and Metropol Water District, the supplies of water to us and a local source like the ocean is a component of our water policy, too, to be to move Orange County in there in the right direction.

Thank you so much, Vic Leipzig and Zac Gold for a great discussion and greatly appreciate it.

It's been a pleasure to be with you today.

Thanks for having us.

Now for more information about our program, just click on KLCS.org and then click Contact us to send us your questions or comments, even your story ideas so we can hear from you all.

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Thank you so much for joining us for this edition of Sustaining US here on KLCS PBS.

I'm David Nazar.