City to Consider Paying for Study on Restarting Desalination Plant
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/080308_city_to_consider_study_on_restarting_water_desalination_plant/
By Rob Kuznia, Noozhawk Staff Writer
Santa Barbara officials say the topic is unrelated to the governor's declaration of a state drought. A water-conservation plan also will be discussed.
The Santa Barbara City Council on Tuesday will consider spending $122,000 on a study to determine how to reboot the long-dormant water desalination plant that can, in times of dryness, turn ocean water into drinking water.
Also on Tuesday, a water-conservation proposal that would, among other things, prohibit new residential and commercial projects from planting turf-grass on small patches, such as between the curb and sidewalk, will be discussed by the Ordinance Committee.
“We here in the city of Santa Barbara do not have an emergency,” said Jim Smith, who has sat on the city’s Water Commission for nine years.
Cachuma Lake, the area’s largest reservoir, remains nearly full since heavy rains soaked Santa Barbara in January. As a result, Smith said, Santa Barbara is at least two years away from a drought.
Officials say the study of the desalination plant is part of a comprehensive effort to update the city’s General Plan, and probably would have occurred at this time even had there been no need for the governor to proclaim a drought.
“This is part of our planning process to look 20 years out,” said Bill Ferguson, water resources supervisor for the city of Santa Barbara. “We don’t need it right now.”
The city started building the plant in 1991, after voter approval in the midst of a local drought that lasted five years and led to drastic measures. The city, for instance, had outlawed the watering of lawns, and put a moratorium on building permits.
The Charles Meyer Desalination Facility, at 525 Yanonali St., cost $34 million to build and was completed in less than a year.
In 1992, the city fired it up, converting salt water into drinking water for customers in the downtown area. Two weeks later, it started to rain, Smith said.
”We did it for a couple months to get some experience with it, then put it in mothballs,” he said.
It has remained inactive since.
For a time, the Montecito and Goleta water agencies each had a share in the project, but those agencies terminated their involvement at the end of a five-year contract.
Those two agencies’ portion of the plant, which made up a little more than half of the total capacity, was sold and shipped to a company in Saudi Arabia. (That country, incidentally, relies heavily on desalination for its drinking water.)
Ferguson said there is a misconception that Santa Barbara sold its portion to Saudi Arabia, too. He added that the study still would need to occur even if the sale to Saudi Arabia hadn’t happened.
“That’s unrelated to the study now,” he said.
Officials said the study costs as much as it does in part because the facility no longer meets current standards; it will take careful examination to discern what needs to be upgraded, and how to do it.
The plant has the capacity to deliver about 3,125 acre-feet of water to Santa Barbara, about one-fifth of its total demand.
The study, should it be approved by the council, will be conducted by Carollo Engineers, based in Phoenix.
Water conservation
Meanwhile, the proposed new standards for water conservation would prohibit new projects from planting turf-grass in areas with any dimension less than 8 feet, such as medians between lanes, and the strip of grass between curbs and sidewalks.
The city staff is proposing the ban as a water-conservation measure. Small areas of turf tend to require too much water for such small patches, Ferguson said. The water, he said, ends up running off into the street and down the drains.
The new rules would apply only to changes that are substantial enough to require approval from city design boards. These tend to include projects with multiple units, commercial projects, large houses or homes on a steep slopes, Ferguson said.
Commercial developments already are prohibited from planting turf-grass, unless they have a recreational component. In noncommercial projects, no more than 20 percent of the yard can be made up of turf grass.
Ferguson said more and more people around town are beginning to replace turf with plants better suited for this dry climate.
The city of Goleta has no such limitations on turf-grass, Ferguson said.
“I’ve got turf at my house, and I’m kind of tired of watering it. You get tired of paying the money for the water,” he said. “So I’m thinking if I’m tired of it, that’s probably typical of other people around town.”
Click here to learn about “water-wise” plants.
Noozhawk staff writer Rob Kuznia can be reached at rkuznia@noozhawk.com.
http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/080308_city_to_consider_study_on_restarting_water_desalination_plant/