Wired -Some 30 miles north of San Diego, along the Pacific Coast, sits the
Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, the largest effort to turn salt water into fresh water in North America.
Each
day 100 million gallons of seawater are pushed through semi-permeable
membranes to create 50 million gallons of water that is piped to
municipal users. Carlsbad, which became fully operational in 2015,
creates about 10 percent of the fresh water the 3.1 million people in
the region use, at about twice the cost of the other main source of
water.
Expensive, yes, but vital for the fact that it is local and
reliable. “Drought is a recurring condition here in California,” said
Jeremy Crutchfield, water resources manager at the San Diego County
Water Authority. “We just came out of a five-year drought in 2017. The
plant has reduced our reliance on imported supplies, which is
challenging at times here in California. So it’s a component for
reliability.”
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