This is pretty well in line with what is going on in Cali about building such a plant..As is typical cost the major concern and then the effects of stripping our ocean of its water and how it will impact sea life..

Seems any alternatives has its own concerns of environmentally friendly issues and its impact..How do we extract the water without hurting marine life???

Droughts every 1000 years, lasting a-hundred years or so certainly confirms the cyclic nature of our world ..

Nation’s largest ocean desalination plant goes up near San Diego; Future of the California coast?

The crews are building what boosters say represents California’s best hope for a drought-proof water supply: the largest ocean desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. The $1 billion project will provide 50 million gallons of drinking water a day for San Diego County when it opens in 2016.

Since the 1970s, California has dipped its toe into ocean desalination –talking, planning, debating. But for a variety of reasons — mainly cost and environmental concerns– the state has never taken the plunge.

Until now.

Fifteen desalination projects are proposed along the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco Bay. Desalination technology is becoming more efficient. And the state is mired in its third year of drought. Critics and backers alike are wondering whether this project in a town better known as the home of Legoland and skateboard icon Tony Hawk is ushering in a new era.

Will California — like Israel, Saudi Arabia and other arid coastal regions of the world — finally turn to the ocean to quench its thirst? Or will the project finally prove that drinking Pacific seawater is too pricey, too environmentally harmful and too impractical for the Golden State?
They went through seven or eight years of hell to get here,” said Tim Quinn, executive director of the Association of California Water Agencies. “But they stuck it out. They got it done. If it succeeds, it will encourage others to try. And if it fails, it will have a chilling effect.”

To critics, the plant is a costly mistake that will use huge amounts of energy and harm fish and other marine life when it sucks in seawater using the intakes from the aging Encina Power Plant next door.

“This is going to be the pig that will try for years to find the right shade of lipstick,” said Marco Gonzalez, an Encinitas attorney who sued on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation and other environmental groups to try to stop construction. “This project will show that the water is just too expensive.”

For the plant to be a success and copied in other parts of the state, Poseidon will have to deliver high-quality drinking water at the price promised — and not cause unexpected impacts to the environment such as fish die-offs.

“It’s a test case,” said Ron Davis, executive director of Cal Desal, an industry advocacy group. “We like to tease them: Only the entire future of desal is riding on this project. No pressure.”

High cost

Almost every discussion about desalination begins and ends with cost.

Desalinated water typically costs about $2,000 an acre foot — roughly the amount of water a family of five uses in a year. The cost is about double that of water obtained from building a new reservoir or recycling wastewater, according to a 2013 study from the state Department of Water Resources.

In Carlsbad, two gallons of seawater will be needed to produce each gallon of drinking water. And to remove the salt, the plant will use an enormous amount of energy — about 38 megawatts, enough to power 28,500 homes — to force 100 million gallons of seawater a day through a series of filters. The process, known as reverse osmosis, removes salt and other impurities by blasting the water at six times the pressure of a fire hose through membranes with microscopic holes.

After enduring severe water shortages during a drought in the late 1980s, Santa Barbara voters agreed to spend $34 million to build a desalination plant. It opened in 1991 and provided water for four months. When the drought ended, the city shut it down. Water from reservoirs and other sources was significantly cheaper.

Similarly, Australia spent more than $10 billion building six huge seawater desalination plants during a severe drought from 1997 to 2009. Today, Cooley noted, four are shut down because when rains finally came, the cost of the water became noncompetitive.

“We run the risk of building facilities that we don’t use,” Cooley said. “And that’s a waste of money.”
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http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/05/29/nations-largest-ocean-desalination-plant-goes-up-near-san-diego-future-of-the-california-coast/

In the seventies when I was at Camp Pendleton, we were having a drought.
I was informed that California hadn't seen substantial rainfall for the last five
years. I mentioned a ship I was on with it's own freshwater desalination
system and that it would be a good idea to build a land based plant for the
state.
As the years went by, I ended up back in California with the same problem,
plus the rising cost of water. Again I talked about it with friends and family.
What I couldn't understand was why the officials in government voted to
have the runoff from the mountains rerouted to empty directly into the ocean
instead of creating more water sheds to conserve it during heavy possible
droughts. They were fully aware of the possible drought but thought Hoover
Dam would never suffer drought and always be capable of providing water.

SEMPER FI

See, even then you were thinking outside the box!!!

That Hoover Dam is captivating to see but doesn’t seem enough to cover all expected of it..Must be since it’s doing its job there is no concern..??

Why did they vote such a thing instead of doing as you suggest.. All the problems they have with little water or mudslides from too much run off and they waste that water ??

I think a few must have been smoking too much
... was Brown involved ??? Or before his time??

Serious about climate change...invest in something practical, right?What you mean is a few 'De shit ulation' plants, especially in San Frnfreko. Sacofermento and some other 'defecated 'places.


"We're establishing a baseline. We're looking for the normal pulse of a megadrought. How often do they occur? Do they happen more in periods of climate change?" asks Toby Ault, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead researcher. "We're examining things happening over the last 1,200 years -- including the period known as the 'Medieval Climate Anomaly' from about 800 to 1300 A.D. -- and we're applying that understanding to see what could happen in the next 100 years."...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/12/171214101843.htm