re: #248 lawhawk

Yeah, also ignore the energy costs of desalination and the fact that pumping all that water into Central CA to then pump it elsewhere makes no sense at all. Only thing that makes sense is that CCJ has lied about the decimal place on his IQ.

You aren’t going to build a desalination plant where there’s not access to salt water.

A whole bunch of planned plants haven’t been built, mostly because of the costs to power them. They are very energy intensive.

They’re crazy energy intensive, and the semi permeable membranes, seals and other components they depend on cost a shitload of money too. Santa Barbara built one a long time ago and it has sat unused for the last 19 years. They sold off half the equipment a while back but it sits in long term standby mode, still costing money just to maintain. They preliminarily authorized some money to refurbish it due to the ongoing drought, but won’t actually spend the money until the last minute. Next vote is scheduled for April of this year.

The facility was built because of a drought that lasted from 1986-1991, but by its completion in 1992, wet weather had returned. With sufficient freshwater supplies, the desal plant was placed in standby mode in 1994, and since then, some of its equipment has been sold off. As we enter year four of a historic drought ​— 𠂺 phenomenon likely to recur in the age of global warming ​— 𠂿reshwater supplies dwindle, and the water market grows fierce, the plant could be Santa Barbara’s savior.

One element of the City Council’s action was to authorize an expedited design-build-operate (DBO) bidding process in which one firm completes all of these tasks. (The typical process is design-bid-build). On Monday, the Public Works department took prospective bidders on a tour of the desal facilities.

The city would like to award a contract by April, waiting just long enough to allow for the possibility of a rainy winter. Should the city go ahead and award a contract, the hope is to have the plant operational by summer 2016 and producing 5,000 acre-feet of water by 2017. Reactivation will cost about $32 million, and ramping the plant up to its capacity of 7,500 acre-feet per year will cost $28 million more. That total of $60 million, many have noted, is about three times the number that city staff threw out when discussions of reactivation first got underway.