In 1996, Cambria had a desalination plant all designed, permitted and ready to break ground. The election that year tossed out the pro-desal Board and the new Board halted the project. Now, thirteen years later, we’re still working toward the permits required to do testing to find an appropriate location. One obvious effect of all the delays is the ongoing fear of running out of water. Another is the list of property owners unable to build. Neither of these effects is healthy for the community, especially considering the disastrous effects of seawater intrusion and the ongoing financial liabilities of lawsuits. But Cambria’s long journey toward adding desalinated water to our supply has presented two possible benefits – the technology has improved immensely and the costs to produce potable water have been cut drastically.
The 1996 desalination plant would have had an open water intake, much more harmful to the environment than the proposed underground intake of the current project. Membrane technology improvements and energy recapturing processes have reduced the amount of energy required. If Cambria’s desalination project does ever get off the ground, these improvements will hopefully be incorporated.
These are some of the better articles from the last year on the new developments in desalination:
From Forbes.com
A better desalination membrane.
A revolutionary device with one moving part is making desalination cheaper.
From Auganomics.com
DXV Water Technologies New Method of desalination
From Aquafornia.com
New desalination process could generate electricity
Energy Recovery reduces desalination’s overall costs in Mexico
CNFO delivers fresh, desalinated water at lower cost
From other sources
Salt is found to ‘stretch,’ with possible effect on desal
Engineered Osmosis: Revolutionizing Saltwater Desalination
Water Purification for the Masses?
Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute on Desalination
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Last 5 posts by Amanda Rice
- Gail Robinette Chosen to Complete DeMicco's Term as CCSD Director on Unanimous Vote
- California Coastal Commission Unanimously Denied Army Corps Desal Tests
- Cambria CSD Agenda for November 27, 2011 Meeting Includes Water Conservation & New Tank Project
- Sunken Oil Tanker Off Cambria's Coastline Will Be Checked Again Soon
A Desalination Factory will never be built. Never, ever. The Cambria C.A.V.E. Society (Cambrians Against Virtually Everything) is still all powerful and will rise again if or when we ever get to the build stage again. The CAVE Society loves to see our water and sewer money spent doing studies, forming committee’s and lots and lots of talking. Environmental studies, lawyer fees, etc. are money makers for the anti-everything people so waste away. But building Desalination or building anything is the big NO.
It’s sad to see our water and sewer money wasted, again.
When will we learn?
It’s funny in a sick sorta way. Mostly it’s just sad to see another wasted decade of community fighting and spending money better spent elsewhere on something that will never be built. Hopefully, someday this madness will end and reality of no desalination factory on the beach is accepted by all.
The other upside to all of the delays for desal for cambria is that we have not, yet, irreversibly harmed our environment, the health of our community or the health of the creatures living off our shores in the PROTECTED Marine Mammal Sanctuary.
Where is our recycled water program in the implementation cue?
Cambria does not need a desal plant. Developers need a Desal Plant. Cambrians need their community services district to complete the implementation of the recycled water portion of their water plan before any more community money is wasted on Desal lobbyists who do what? every month? We don’t know because they do not provide us with the monthly reports we have requested.
Please read about the environmental DAMAGE desal has on the environment. This is Cambria…not Long Beach (no offense to anyone in Long Beach but the environments are quite different is my point)
Go to this site and read the information or Google Environmental impacts of Desal.
If the community allows a Desal plant here and the CCSD decides to sell the Desal plant to a private company because they need money.. ..and they are allowed to do that… we will have NO say in our water issues. We will not even have an option to protest rate increases because it will be a privately owned water company.
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/pubs/reports/desalination-an-ocean-of-problems
Desalination: An Ocean of Problems
Do we really need to drink the ocean because our freshwater supplies are running low? The corporations selling ocean desalination certainly want you to think that taking salt out of seawater is our best and only remaining water option.
Read the full report online.
Yet research at Food & Water Watch exposes ocean desalination as an expensive and dangerous technology that policymakers consider at the risk of our public water supply.
We found:
• Ocean desalination costs more than any other option
• Ocean desalination uses more energy than any other option—which means bigger contributions to global warming
• Desalination technology can kill marine life
• Desalination creates water pollution
• Desalination can fail to remove harmful chemicals from your drinking water
• Desalination projects invite corporate abuse of your public water systems
• Desalination is not necessary—we have other alternatives
Conservation programs are cheaper and without the risks of desalination. They are not as profitable for private companies but they better serve the public.
Thanks for mentioning the ” … ongoing financial liabilities of lawsuits …” as this seems to be thought of as merely a minor financial irritant by most. Who cares if this continues as it has in the past? The difference now is that the UNCLOG lawsuit has entered new legal ground – ala the appeal now working its way though the system (this is not the same old argument, folks). When the decision is made in the Second Court of Appeals (presumably this winter?) we may have a new ball game to watch – where the CCSD is frantically backpeddaling all the way to the residents of Cambria’s pocketbooks. This time the cost probably will be much more noticable to those who are supportive of NIMBY ideology (Not In My Back Yard). Fortunantely, most in Cambria would rather pay this added cost then get involved with the issue – otherwise they would be more attentive to what is happening right now in their name. Ignorance will be no excuse when the chickens come home to roost.
Private ownership of Desal is an unfounded fear and is addressed specifically in the North Coast Area Plan approved by the Board of Supervisors and certified by the Coastal Commission in late 2007:
5. Desalinization Plants. Desalinization plants constructed to serve development within the service boundaries of the CCSD shall only be permitted if owned and operated by the CCSD. Private desalinization plants are prohibited.
The North Coast Area Plan update process took over ten years and included many opportunities for public input and CCSD collaboration. If any private company was interested in trying to change this legal constraint, they would surely face a long and expensive ordeal that is unlikely to find support at any level.
The Puna district in Hawaii suffers occasional drought conditions and water trucks are used to supply water. The people in the Puna area know how to conserve water and if water is in short supply they conserve even more. Why is it that we can’t build small homes and be responsible for our own water supply? Some of you already have pictures in your minds of large trucks roaring up and down the quiet streets of Cambria, but that’s not the way it is in Puna. The trucks are slightly larger than a pickup because the roads in most areas are not very wide. Rain is the main source in Puna and Cambria could learn to store rain water as well. Conservation is the key. Let’s grow up and unite for freedom to build again with conservation as the backbone to a happy medium.
I have owned a couple lots in the area and talking to people who own property there, they say they don’t want to have new people building and they want to keep the place very private and just to themselves. This is not the American way. We have a land and we have the right to build on it. If we don’t have enough water we will dig a well if that is against the environment we do what other cities are doing we import water.
My dream was to have my kids enjoy a weekend away from the city once in a while, with out going to hotels or motels and sleeping in someone else’s bed.
How much water would a small family need. We predict we would spend about 10 weeks out of the year there, thee wouldn’t be much of water need for plants, nor our property is large enough to build a pool.
But I guess since the city people who own their houses over there don’t want new people in their private “resort” paid by taxpayers like me!!!!!!!
If they were really concerned about the environment, they wouldn’t have built there in the first place. But now that they own and live in their houses, it is not good for environment for others to live there. This is democracy in action!!!!!!
I want to hear your comments.
I owned a small land for almost 20 years, when I bought this land, I was told there is a water shortage and I should not expect to end soon, but lets get real for 20 years this problem has not been solved yet??????? unless there is a bureaucracy going on behind this?? I was going to spend there only a few weekend every year, how much of water do you think we are going to use???
If you travel to some of those Arabic country you will see in the middle of desert they are building high rises but we in the country of USA, right by the ocean complaining of water shortage, don’t you think this is a joke?? specially nothing has changed for the last 20 years???????