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Anthony Lewis
Professor Arthur Engelbrecht
Saturday English 001
19 December 2015
Massive Drought Leads to Ocean Desalination
Throughout the past seven years, the state of California has been in a drought; it has been
exceptionally serious in the past three. The Definition of a drought is, ...a period of belowaverage precipitation in a given region, resulting in prolonged shortages in its waters supply,
whether atmospheric, surface or groundwater (Drought Monitor). The drought started in the
Southern California region and has slowly spread up north, although still the worst in the South.
Over the past three years Los Angeles has hit an all time low record level of rain with almost
twelve inches of rain in the past three years, which is almost eighteen inches below average.
With this being the most severe drought on record Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of
emergency in January asking everyone to prepare for water shortages. In efforts to provide water,
fifteen ocean desalination plants are being built, primarily in the Los Angeles, and San Diego
counties. Being the biggest plant in the western hemisphere the one billion dollar project being
built in Carlsbad, California will be providing 50 million gallons of drinking water to San Diego
County a day when it is finished sometime in 2016. The question is, why is water desalination
seen as good, why is it seen as bad, and are we weighing both the positive and negative effects of
it; how can it affect the environment and the community that it serves.
I have wrote this paragraph to let my reader know what to expect so when he or she is
reading, they cannot get lost and confused when reading. A Las Cruces newspaper article
revealed, Researchers are chipping away at the secrets of a promising water desalination

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technology to use in rural communities (keener, 1). so I will be talking about the major and
minor details of the ocean desalination projects and I have broken it down into seven paragraphs.
I started with the Introduction which gave a brief overview of the situation with the drought and
ocean desalination. The next paragraph is this one that is explaining the layout of my paper. The
preceding paragraph answers the question, why is water desalination seen as good. The
following body paragraph after that is why is it seen as bad. In the paragraph after that, I go over
the Positive and negative effects of these desalination plants, and the final body paragraph
answers how the plants can affect the environment and the community that it serves. And finally
the last paragraph is the conclusion.
With everything taking place to help the drought and desalination plants, why is ocean
desalination seen as such an extravagant thing. To increase local supplies of fresh water in
California, as many as twenty new RO desalination facilities have been proposed (Mcilvaine 1).
Being that there are twenty desalination plants being built along the coast of Southern California,
that will bring in a lot of water for the given area. Because Southern California was hit harder in
the drought than Northern California, I understand the reasoning for all of the plants being down
there. On a higher level though, California as a whole is in a drought, some places worse than
others, but overall the whole state is suffering, so in reality it would be smart to spread the plants
up north as well. Although this is very expensive, The $1 billion project will provide 50 million
gallons of drinking water a day for San Diego County when it opens in 2016 (Rogers 1). That is
an enormous number to supply each day for water. What is amazing is that it is only one plant as
well, so there are still roughly nineteen other plants--not as big-- that will be helping to
contribute with this mass project. On the Carlsbad desalination site the project overview says,
Desalination has evolved into a desirable water supply alternative by tapping the largest

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reservoir in the world - the Pacific Ocean (Carlsbaddesal 1). There is an estimated amount of
187 quintillion gallons of water in the pacific ocean. With that amount of water it is nearly
impossible to run out of water for the desalination plants. This would be way more than enough
water to be able to provide some water to San Diego County, and the rest of Southern California
where the other plants are, until we are out of the drought. Although there are many positive
things to these ocean desalination plants, there are some downturns as well.
Why is the desalination of ocean water seen as such a bad thing to do. That's not only
because the current drought is the longest and most severe in memory, but because a $1-billion
desalination project scheduled to start operating in Carlsbad this fall will be attracting lots of
attention (Hiltzik, 1). From the article on Los Angeles Times website, 1 billion dollars is being
spent on this major plant that may, or may not help the drought. Not only is this an enormous
amount of money that the State of California cannot afford to spend, but if they really need to
spend it, they can find a more cost efficient way, and better solution to help with the drought.
Something that could have been done is providing low flow shower heads and or sink heads,
which being there are 12 million houses in California and say there is an average of three sinks
and one shower head in each house with a shower head priced at about twenty-five dollars, and a
sink head at twelve dollars, and in total that is roughly 588 million dollars which could save a
whole lot of water while saving about 412 million dollars. The La Times Website reported The
plant, the largest of its kind in the U.S., is designed to provide San Diego County with about 50
million desalinated gallons a day, about 7% of its water needs (Hiltzik 1). If anyone is asked if
they think 50 million gallons of water is a lot, almost everyone would say yes, including me, but
if one thinks about the population and how much water is actually consumed, it really isnt
much. San Diego country has an average population of 3.5 million people and if you divide that

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into the 50 million thats only fourteen gallons of water per person, each day. As that may seem
like a lot of water person, that doesnt include anything else like businesses, fountains, nothing,
as if water was only used for humans and nothing else, which in that case it wouldnt seem too
bad, but it isnt the case so it is a relatively small amount of water. So what happens if the
drought ends due to a winter with an enormous amount of rain and thunderstorms. If the major
winter by the name of, El Nino, were to come like the Japanese say, and get us out of this huge
drought, the twenty plus plants being built would have been a huge waste of time and money.
Not only would it be a huge waste of time and money but it would be a waste of space. Where
the plants were built for all we know of could have been something else that saves live or
something but because it was a bit rushed and not there is no drought in this case, they would just
be random structures without use. The reasons why people like or dislike desalination is always
great to know but when it comes down to what positive and negative things really come from it
is where it gets great.
The first most positive thing coming from this project is that it will provide and sustain
some of the water that california doesnt have, and contribute to helping get out of this drought.
From all of this happening what californians can get out of it is a lesson. All of these events in
this drought must have happened for some kind of reason, not for none at all. This could teach us
a lesson about what we shouldn't do again, which is take advantage of the water supply again,
because its not never ending. Its almost like say World War II, because it happened and we
learned from it so it won't happen again, the same goes here, this massive drought happened,
now lets learn from it so it won't occur again. An article on the pacific institute's website states,
Modern reverse-osmosis desalination plants, such as those planned or proposed on the
California coast, take in large volumes of seawater generally two gallons are withdrawn for

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every gallon of freshwater produced and pass it through fine-pored membranes to separate
freshwater from salt. The highly concentrated brine is then typically disposed of back into the
ocean (Cooley, 1). With that much brine going into the ocean it could be very harmful to the
swimmers near It. Even though there is minor harm to this, if all of the plants were to be
upgraded to say fifty million gallons a day im, sure that would make a huge difference. By doing
the calculations, 50 million gallons of water a day, multiplied by twenty plants would equal one
billion gallons of water a day. With that being said that would increase the gallons of water per
person, not including anything else, only people, from fourteen, to 285 gallons of water per day.
That is a significant amount of water that can really make a huge impact on the major water
shortage California has at this moment. With every major project it is exponentially important to
know the positive and negative side effects of the projects, as well as what it will do to the
community and the environment that surrounds it.
What will this project do to the environment and community can be shocking with a little
bit of research. What really will happen to the sea life, and ocean water around the plants is a
major area that will be affected. When these desalination plants run, they take all of the salt and
gunk out of the water and it is disposed back into the ocean in the same area. This can affect the
environment strongly, because the salt and gunk contact will rise dramatically. If the animals that
live in the area do not adapt to the extra salt in the water they will be forced to move to
somewhere else, or they will die, and as for the plants it is the same thing, they have adapted to
where they are living now and with the high salt volume no one knows what will happen to the
sea life. The book Desalination: Water from water on page seven, section 1:2:3 in the book says,
...the impact of climate change on global water stress cannot be ignored (Kucera, 1) A main
impact on the climate is the water content and the way it flows. By changing the solubility of the

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water that can affect the climate and make it hotter, due to the fact of more salt. Not only can this
affect the climate but the way and the speed the current the water flows if enough of it is put into
the water. Another problem with the desalination plants is the the electricity and the pollution in
the air. This plant will use a vast amount of electricity which then racks up an electricity bill,
which has to be paid with from money that California does not have to spend. As for the
pollution, there is already a huge amount of pollution in Los Angeles, and this is only making it
worse. All in all this is really hurting the environment and the people in the community that
surrounds it. These being the affected things it has on the community and environment, with
almost everything done, there will be setbacks, or negative effects.
Why is water desalination seen as good, why is it seen as bad, and are we weighing both
the positive and negative effects of it; how can it affect the environment and the community that
it serves was the question to ask. Overall there are both good and bad things with the ocean
desalination plant project, because for every positive there is a negative. One of the examples of
that is that yes it will provide 50 million gallons of water each day to San Diego county when it
opens, but the down to that is that is only seven percent of what they need, so its really not
much. Another example would be there are twenty plus plants being built which is great, but they
will be disposing of all of the salt back into the ocean so the brine content will be higher. For the
last example, the plant being built in carlsbad, is the biggest in the Northern Hemisphere being
able to get fifty million gallons of purified drinking water a day, but the downside is it costs 1
billion dollars, and california is already in debt 443 billion, not 26.6 billion like most media and
officials try to say, so we really shouldnt be spending that much at all. In my opinion I believe
that yes these plants are great for helping for water but they will be doing more harm to the
environment than good so there is really no good reason to have all of these. By spewing all of

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that brine back into where you got it, its really just raising the salt content where you got the
water and you will be getting more and more salt in each batch, and less and less water. If I were
to contribute to helping the drought and I had a billion dollars, I would invest a little bit into
research on a less expensive, yet more or equally efficient way to acquire more water or save
water. All in all I admire the effort they took to help with this massive drought but I believe there
are more intelligent, economical, and efficient ways of doing it.

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Works Cited
Cooley, Heather, Newsha Ajami, and Mathew Heberger. "Pacific Institute: Research for People
and the Planet." Pacific Institute. N.p., 11 Dec. 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
Hiltzik, Michael. "Desalination Plants Aren't a Good Solution for California Drought." Los
Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 24 Apr. 2015. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.
Keener, Will. "Students Test Desalination Techniques for Public Use." Las Cruces Sun 20 Sept.
2010, News sec.: n. pag. Print.
Kucera, Jane. Desalination: Water from Water. N.p.: John Wiley & Sons, 2014. Print.
Lewis, Claud. "Home." Carlsbad Desalination Project. Carlsbaddesal, 14 Dec. 2014. Web. 16
Dec. 2015.
McIlvaine, Robert. "Reverse Osmosis." 115.8 (2008): 20+. ProQuest. Web. 25 May 2014.
Rogers, Paul. "Nation's Largest Ocean Desalination Plant Goes up near San Diego; Future of the
California Coast?" - San Jose Mercury News. Mercury News, 29 May 2014. Web. 16 Dec. 2015.