On July 21, 2015, the Santa Barbara City Council gave final approval to a redesigned desalination plant as a last-resort water supply for the city, in the throes of one of the worst droughts in California history.
While some have questioned whether more could have been done to stave off this decision, the reality is that the Charles E. Meyer Desalination Plant has long been designated within the city’s water portfolio as an emergency supply, and the severity of the current drought has prompted such an emergency, with no other water available to fill the immediate shortfall.
The uncomfortable fact is that even if El Niño returns with a vengeance and brings with it significant rainfall, the growing challenges of climate change make clear that the city cannot rely on conservation measures alone.
The diminishing reliability of water supplies from Cachuma and the State Water Project means that the city cannot depend on the sources of water that have sustained Santa Barbara for decades.
The desalination decision is behind us, but the question remains: If and when the emergency has abated, how will the City proceed with its long term water supply portfolio?
As a requirement of its permit for the desal plant and at its own behest, the city is moving ahead with a significant and progressive study through the National Water Research Institute and Carollo Engineers to not only investigate the feasibility and opportunities associated with subsurface intake technology for the desalination plant, but also to conduct a feasibility study for indirect and direct potable reuse of purified water through either a brand new facility or a repurposed desalination plant.
Every citizen interested in the future of water in Santa Barbara should attend the kick off meeting for this study on Aug. 5, 2015, from 9:30 a.m. to 12 noon at Santa Barbara City Hall, to provide input and to hear the city’s consultant, Carollo Engineers, present an overview of the work plans for these studies.
Potable reuse projects, as detailed in a recently published white paper by Heal the Ocean (HTO), utilize advanced treatment processes – microfiltration, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet light (UV) disinfection – to treat wastewater into a purified, near-distilled drinking water resource.
Proceeding with a potable reuse project through either indirect or direct reuse methods (once regulations are approved for the latter) could provide significant benefits to rate-payers and the environment.
For instance, as shown in HTO’s recently released Potable Reuse: A New Water Resource for California white paper, potable reuse projects are less expensive than many alternative water supplies, including desalination, because they utilize wastewater that is cheaper and far less energy intensive to treat.
Potable reuse projects are also heavily favored by the state – because of their environmental benefits, such that a total of $625 million in Proposition 1 grant funding has been designated to reduce the cost of building wastewater plants into recycled water plants.
And as illustrated in Heal the Ocean’s recently released “Waste(d)water” infographic, the city could produce enough purified water – approximately 5.1 million gallons per day (MGD)– to meet 53 percent of the city’s total water demand.
In other words, if the city expanded potable reuse, it could supply a significant quantity of locally controlled, cost-effective, and environmentally-friendly water.
And despite the worries of a relatively loud but diminishing minority of Californians, potable reuse is safe.
The National Research Council, the state of California, and scientists all over the world have evaluated and determined the safety and efficacy of these projects. The technology employed is better than anything used in conventional drinking water treatment.
And, whether the city decides to proceed with indirect or direct potable reuse, any project will be required to follow stringent monitoring, reporting, and regulatory requirements from the state before purified water is allowed to be combined with other sources (e.g., surface water, water from seawater desalination, groundwater, etc.), and treated in a municipal drinking water system.
Heal the Ocean looks forward to further discussing the future of Santa Barbara’s water portfolio at the Aug. 5 meeting and beyond. We have been working for many years with wastewater treatment managers to access State funds for converting their plants into recycled water plants, because it is our mantra to “turn the pipes around,” to cease the disposal of waste(d)water into the ocean.
The first Public Meeting for the City of Santa Barbara Subsurface Desalination Intake and Potable Reuse Feasibility Studies will be held on Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at Santa Barbara City Hall, 735 Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara. More information can be found on the National Water Research Institute’s website: http://www.nwri-usa.org/santa-barbara-panel.htm
James Hawkins is a policy analyst for Heal the Ocean. He is the author of “Potable Reuse: A New Water Resource for California,” which describes the benefits of advanced treatment technologies to turn wastewater into a purified drinking water resource.