It is interesting to note that over the last six years, Australia has been able to permit, design, and start construction on six major seawater desalination projects, and three of those plants are already in operation. That is amazing! On the other hand, desalination plants in the US tend to get embroiled in loads of problems, and California's first, the Carlsbad Desalination Plant, is yet to be constructed. It took ten years of planning and five years in the state’s permitting process to receive final approvals from every required regulatory and permitting agency in the state, including the California Coastal Commission, State Lands Commission and Regional Water Quality Control Board. After all that, every other week we still see lawsuits raised for one issue or the other, only to be struck down by the courts.
This makes one wonder - why is it such an issue in California and not so in Australia? Just like the Australians, Californians live on the coast and have very similar meteorological, environmental, and economic issues. (Oh yes, I know, I lived in Oz for couple years and have recently returned.) So what is going on?
The answer is in three parts:
One, California has not faced as severe a water shortage as Australia. Southern Californians can get water imported (transported) from the mountains at relatively cheap and subsidized rates; whereas, in Australia, when the reservoir levels dropped down below 21% in March 2007, it was a major crisis and projects got done.
Two, though California and Australia face similar environmental issues, the permitting process in California seems to be haphazard and irregular. There are several agencies regulating various aspects of the environmental regime and often there is no dialogue or synergy between the agencies, leading to excessive delays in the permitting process. Each issue is reviewed and judged by different agencies at different times! There is a desperate need of one supervisory authority that coordinates all the reviews.
Three, project economics vary between the two regions. Projects in Australia are led by the centrally planned regional water authorities who spread the cost of the project over the entire service area. Here in California, the model adopted was of a developer led project, whereby the developer was guaranteeing the cost of desalted water would never exceed the cost of imported water. This later model gave a different dimension to the project and led to mistrust, suspicion, and even animosity against the 'private' approach and raised cries of 'lack of transparency' and complaints of 'aggressive behavior'. The general trend is that the public believes in the 'non-profit' nature of public agencies (even if they are sometimes fraught with inefficiencies) and tend to disapprove of developers.
So, where are we now with Carlsbad Desal Project? The project just broke ground on some initial sitework. Unfortunately, the lawsuits are still coming, check here for latest development on this project.
Also check out some interesting presentations on desalination at the 2010 Water Reuse Conference. My friend Joe Monaco and I will be presenting on Tuesday, March 9 at 2PM (Session C5).
Acknowledgment: Thoughts presented in this blog also appears in the Water Desalination Repot Vol 46, No 8, edited by Tom Pankratz, and is repeated here with the editor's permission.
This makes one wonder - why is it such an issue in California and not so in Australia? Just like the Australians, Californians live on the coast and have very similar meteorological, environmental, and economic issues. (Oh yes, I know, I lived in Oz for couple years and have recently returned.) So what is going on?
The answer is in three parts:
One, California has not faced as severe a water shortage as Australia. Southern Californians can get water imported (transported) from the mountains at relatively cheap and subsidized rates; whereas, in Australia, when the reservoir levels dropped down below 21% in March 2007, it was a major crisis and projects got done.
Two, though California and Australia face similar environmental issues, the permitting process in California seems to be haphazard and irregular. There are several agencies regulating various aspects of the environmental regime and often there is no dialogue or synergy between the agencies, leading to excessive delays in the permitting process. Each issue is reviewed and judged by different agencies at different times! There is a desperate need of one supervisory authority that coordinates all the reviews.
Credit: WDR, Vol 46, No. 8
Three, project economics vary between the two regions. Projects in Australia are led by the centrally planned regional water authorities who spread the cost of the project over the entire service area. Here in California, the model adopted was of a developer led project, whereby the developer was guaranteeing the cost of desalted water would never exceed the cost of imported water. This later model gave a different dimension to the project and led to mistrust, suspicion, and even animosity against the 'private' approach and raised cries of 'lack of transparency' and complaints of 'aggressive behavior'. The general trend is that the public believes in the 'non-profit' nature of public agencies (even if they are sometimes fraught with inefficiencies) and tend to disapprove of developers.
So, where are we now with Carlsbad Desal Project? The project just broke ground on some initial sitework. Unfortunately, the lawsuits are still coming, check here for latest development on this project.
Also check out some interesting presentations on desalination at the 2010 Water Reuse Conference. My friend Joe Monaco and I will be presenting on Tuesday, March 9 at 2PM (Session C5).
Acknowledgment: Thoughts presented in this blog also appears in the Water Desalination Repot Vol 46, No 8, edited by Tom Pankratz, and is repeated here with the editor's permission.
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I think this is an important blog emphasising some major issues in the economics of water management. One small comparative point. The same issues arise in the usage of imported oil versus costlier alternatives, so long as the pure financial costs of oil are low people will not use more expensive alternatives. However, once the aggregate costs (dependence, security, extenalities) are taken into account, the imported oil is no longer 'cheap'. The same is happening in the case of water.
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