I took a bit of a hiatus over the summer so I could relax from a mountain’s worth of work and enjoy my friends and family. As the summer comes to an end and the days get shorter many people in Southern California are gearing up for rain dances to try an squeeze some rain from the atmosphere.
It amazes me that in Southern California, which is known for the beautiful ocean that we are not doing much to harness one of the largest reservoirs on our planet: the Pacific Ocean! Many opponents say that the water is too expensive but with almost 20% of the electricity costs of the entire state of California devoted to delivering water from Northern California to Southern California, I am not sure why the Governor Brown is not lobbing the federal government to invest in desalination plants on the coasts of California. Instead Governor Brown is pushing for a massive bond measure to drill tunnels under the Bay Delta to deliver the water to the South in case of a massive earthquake. Instead of the conversation devoted to local water resources we are talking about alternate means of delivering the water. I would like the money the state spends on the delivery of water devoted to other business related or education projects.
On another note, the water quality related to the ocean desalination project would be much cleaner than the water we currently receive from the State Water Project and the Colorado River because desalination requires reverse osmosis which will produce pure H2O not a mix of constituents from discharges above our watershed. Even though the cost of desalination may be more expensive now I think that it is not a treatment technology that we can ignore, especially with the ocean as our backyard.
Amber M. Baylor 