California’s South Coast Water District wants to build a new desalination facility that may produce up to 56,780 cubic metres of water a day.  The Water District endeavours to construct the facility on its property in Dana Point (121,406 square metres in size), near San Juan Creek.^[1]   Late last week, water district officials announced their intent to carry out an environmental impact report for the facility.

Currently, the South Coast Water District is the only agency that supports the Doheny Ocean Desalination Project.  In 2002, the Municipal Water District of Orange County began exploring desalination options along the Pacific Coast; and for the Doheny project, the Municipal water district and several other agencies commissioned a study of the area, concluding that they could build a desalination facility on the site.  However, the previously interested parties dropped out, and the South Coast district now proceeds alone on the project—which may cost up to $90 million for design and construction.

Meanwhile, nearby, the Hermosa Beach City Council is opposing the construction of a proposed $300 million desalination plant.^[3]  While the West Basin Municipal District proposed the construction of the plant for El Segundo, and presented an informational session in support of their plans—the City Council responded with a letter of opposition to the water agency.  A month earlier, the city of Manhattan Beach also sent a letter of opposition to the plant.  Local leaders of the Hermosa Beach area, alongside representatives of non-profit environmental groups (the Surfrider Foundation and Heal the Bay), are supporting the City Council’s position—urging focus on conservation and recycling programs before resorting to desalination.^[4]

The West Basin Board has not yet decided the fate of the plant.  However, the Board’s President, Carol Kwan, reiterated after the City Council vote: “We remain committed to further exploring ocean water desalination through research, educating our communities, and the EIR process.”

In a similar spirit of opposition, an editorial in Australian paper The Age expresses community indignation at the reactivation of the Wonthaggi Desalination plant.^[5]  The government’s last minute water order for the plant will increase the cost to Melbourne Water users by $200,000 per day.  Over the past decade, operating costs for households in Melbourne have increased 76 percent—compared 10 percent in Sydney, where officials pursue infrastructure for solutions such as rainwater harvesting.^[6]  The editorial questions the costs of operating the plant as well as the legitimacy of the contract (citing the unserviceable, underground 87-kilometre cable from the LaTrobe brown coal thermal power stations).

^{A dried channel at Thanh Phu District of the Ben Tre province in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta (VNA/Corbis)}

Meanwhile, in Vietnam, physics teacher Truong Huu Dung and his students at Nguyen Dinh Chieu High School in the Mekong Delta province of Ben Tre have developed a solar-powered desalination machine that costs $90 (USD) and produces 6 litres of fresh water a day.^[7]   Their hope is to offer local residents an affordable way to access fresh water, in the midst of a severe and intensifying drought that plagues the Mekong Delta.  

As reported in The Guardian, the region is the “most vulnerable location in Vietnam to impacts of climate change.”^[8]  The Vietnamese government, as well as those of Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, all share the lower Mekong basin, and are “acutely aware that they are threatened by climate change caused by others.”  The consequences have been devastating: “The region has recorded more extreme weather, deeper droughts, heavier rains, bigger floods, and much hotter temperature than ever before – all consistent with UN scientists’ predictions of global warming.”^[9]