Getting a reliable water supply to California isn't just about drinking water.
The State Water Control Board, a division of the State Environmental Protection Agency controls water storage in as many as 1400 named dams and 1300 reservoirs, 154 of which hold over 200,000 acre-feet of water.
Across California, deep-rooted environmentalism has made it difficult to put into practice solutions to increase water storage or produce new water through desalination.
Thus, California is limited to only two currently existing water storage resources: surface sources such as dams and reservoirs, and subsurface aquifers, which together are designed to provide a five-year supply of water for both consumer and agricultural use.
Water recycling techniques are improving recapture, but "New" freshwater from desalination has far greater volume potential than recycling used water.
Having screens designed to meet the 2015 California Ocean Plan Amendment for desalination should decrease, if not end, the environmental litigation that has been holding up building a plant in Carlsbad, which is supposed to process 50 million gallons of water per day.
If California would build a dozen or more large-scale desalinization plants up and down its cost, each capable of handling 50 million gallons of water per day, that would deliver in excess of 6.7 million acre-feet annually of new water, which would satisfy the need of 10.5 million households.
Sunday, June 27, 2021
The Solution To California's Water Crisis Lies Off Its Coast
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