In Search of a Drought-Proof Source - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 290

is the test case for desal in Southern California, and many people were still following its
stop-and-start progress with zealous interest.
Critics such as Food & Water Watch noted that due to spiraling costs, Poseidon
might need to sell its water for as much as $2,000 to $3,000 an acre-foot, which is far
more than the $950 an acre-foot the company said it would charge in 2008. (MacLaggan
said his water would cost about $1,690 an acre-foot. By comparison, local water agen-
cies charge $1,150 per acre-foot.) They also complained that desal requires finicky, ex-
pensive membranes to remove salts from seawater, and that desal requires tremendous
amounts of power, which will be costly as fuel prices rise and adds greenhouse gases.
“Ocean desalination, quite frankly, is the SUV of water ,” Mindy McIntyre, of the
Planning and Conservation League, editorialized in the LosAngelesTimes. “It requires
more energy to desalinate a gallon of ocean water than it does to pump water from
Northern California over a mountain range all the way to Southern California.”
In a counter-editorial, MacLaggan replied, “McIntyre's Model T-era assertion [is] in-
credible and outdated…. Yes, energy is one of the cost variables associated with the pro-
duction of desalinated water; however , the same is true for the transportation of impor-
ted water and the treatment of reclaimed water. In truth, the escalating energy costs …
will affect all means of new drinking water.”
A broader environmental critique holds that desal plants use enormous amounts of
seawater, which presents two problems: first, seawater provides habitat for plankton,
fish, seaweeds, and other marine life, some of which are killed as the plant inhales water;
second, seawater is considered a public resource, one that desalinators want to use for
private profit.
To build the plant, Poseidon must get permits from numerous bodies, including the
powerful California Coastal Commission, whose staff scientists rejected Poseidon's pro-
posal four times and recommended that the commissioners not approve the project
because of the potential destruction of marine life. MacLaggan grew frustrated and in
an unguarded moment snapped to local newspapers, “Our intake will kill about two
pounds of ish a day . That's less than the daily consumption of one pelican.” (A few
months later, a scientist with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board found that,
due to mathematical errors, Poseidon had underestimated the number of ish it would
kill by a factor of four . )
Perhaps the most contentious aspect of desal, however, is how to dispose of the
highly concentrated salt brine left over from the plant's water-cleansing. Every hundred
gallons of desalinated seawater yields fifteen to fifty gallons of drinking water (depend-
ing on the process, and how salty the water is to begin with), and fifty to eighty-five gal-
lons of brine. When the highly concentrated brine is flushed back to sea, it can destroy
aquatic species, particularly those in the egg or immature phase. One environmentalist