
CA Water Board Could Relax Drought Restrictions
California water regulators could relax statewide conservation rules even as the state enters a likely fifth year of record drought.

California water regulators could relax statewide conservation rules even as the state enters a likely fifth year of record drought.

CARLSBAD, CA — On Monday, the door of America’s new largest seawater desalination plant opened to journalists, elected officials and the public with the lofty promise of helping to solve California’s drought distress.

California will suffer severe shortages, with or without a warmer planet. We need to act soon. Water policy may not generate flashy headlines, and politicians who lay the foundations for reform may not be in office ten or twenty years from now, when credit is handed out. But it can be done. Israel has shown us how.

San Diego’s City Council ruled this week that residents will soon be drinking recycled sewage, and paying for the pleasure of doing so. The council is raising water rates 16 per cent to pay for a new sewage recycling plant and a desalination plant in Carlsbad.

As Carlsbad’s $1 billion desalination plant is about to go online in the next 30 days, residents can look forward to paying for huge water subsidies to a private company for the next 30 years.

The Santa Barbara City Council voted unanimously this week to approve a loan to reopen a mothballed desalination plant in an effort to battle California’s record four-year drought.

The Carlsbad Desalination Project will be the largest facility of its kind in the Western Hemisphere when it opens later this year.

Israeli water technology experts will help California navigate through its worst drought in history. According to Ynet News, several Israeli water technology firms are already competing for contracts in the Golden State.

California is mired in the fourth year of the worst drought in state history.

Desalinization has emerged as an answer to the state’s chronic water shortages. As the Orange County Register notes, desalinization would provide a near-infinite supply of water at only twice the price. The main objection of environmentalists is that desalinization uses up to 50% more electricity, meaning more fossil fuels might be burned to make water, setting back efforts to fight climate change. It is an objection that is looking less and less serious.

Looking back at the Republican victory in California’s 2018 gubernatorial election, we can see that the roots of the GOP sweep in Sacramento are traceable to the events of April 2015. It was then that the Democrats’ romance with Big Green Austerity Politics became a fatal embrace.

With the Sierra Nevada snowpack at its lowest level since 1950, California Governor Jerry Brown announced last week that he would implement the first mandatory water reductions in state history. But Brown also called on districts to streamline permitting practices for water projects, and to invest in new water infrastructure technologies. Brown’s comments amount to his first vocal support for widespread desalinization.

The city of Santa Barbara is planning to re-open and modernize a mothballed desalination plant in an effort to combat California’s crippling drought, now entering its fourth year.