This month, a small, non-profit organization, Spotlight on Coastal Corruption, served a lawsuit against five California Coastal Commissioners.^[1]  As reported in the Los Angeles Times, the lawsuit could cost the commissioners “millions of dollars in civil fines if the courts confirm hundreds of alleged transparency rule violations.”  The non-profit pursuing the lawsuit has formed “solely to pursue the allegations”—which includes a list of 590 violations of “disclosure laws for so-called ex-parte communications” in the past two...

In Australia, officials in the state of Victoria have placed a “controversial” $27 million order for desalinated water—even though water levels have surged in dams across the state.^[1]  Water Minister Lisa Neville explained that high rainfall at this time of year did not preclude the need for the year-round “insurance policy” that the Wonthaggi Desalination plant provides.  Minister Neville also stated that Aquasure, the plant’s operator, would charge Victoria’s residents a hefty price if the government had cancelled its...

In the state of Johor in southern Malaysia, the government will collaborate with the private sector to create a desalination plant.  Located near Forest City, the proposed plant is poised to become the largest in the nation.  According to the chairman of the state-run Public Works, Rural and Regional Development Committee, Datuk Hasni Mohammad, Johor state will also explore other options for expanding its water supply (through focus on groundwater resources and rainwater harvesting).^[1] 

Meanwhile, this summer, a lack of...

Plans for Baja California’s Rosarito Beach desalination facility are moving forward with a contract for public-private partnership.  The plant will become the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.  At full capacity, it will produce 378,500 cubic metres of water per day—which is twice the capacity of the Carlsbad desalination plant.^[1]  As reported in the San Diego Union Tribune, the contract stipulates that a private consortium will build the facility in two phases: the first phase will launch in 2019 or 2020,...

Diplomacy between Turkey and Israel has enabled plans for a new desalination plant in Palestine.  In June, the two countries conducted negotiations that ended diplomatic discord that had lasted for six years.  The root of the conflict dated to May 2010, when relations between the long-time allies became strained: Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists aboard a ship that was attempting to break through an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza.^[1]  The détente appears to reconcile the objective of the larger Turkish flotilla,...

A new 150,000 m3/d desalination plant will soon be constructed at Egypt’s East Port Said.  This plant will become one of the five desalination plants that the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development will develop on the Sinai Peninsula—as part of a three-year, $900 million investment programme.  Egypt’s Ministry of International Cooperation and the Kuwait Fund have entered into a $211 million agreement to construct the plant.^[1] 

This week in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, government officials and members of the UN Department of...

Monterey Canyon—one of the world’s deepest submarine canyons—may soon become the source of water for a proposed desalination plant in central California.  While the canyon runs more than 3 kilometres deep into the earth, the proposed plant would draw water from an intake pipe located only 40 metres below ground level, and 300 metres from the shore.^[1]  This Deep Water Desal project would ameliorate the water shortages affecting the Monterey Bay region, which has no access to California’s State Water Project, a water system that...

Water has been a source of political turmoil in the Middle East, but it may also become a source of political union.  Scientists at Israel’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research believe that Israel’s water management strategies and new infrastructure could help other countries in the Middle East.  Over the past few years, Israel has produced water-saving measures and desalination plants that have eliminated the nation’s water scarcity, including new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment, and desalination pioneered by...

Along the coastline of the western U.S. and Mexico, officials have pursued desalination as a means of addressing water-scarcity issues.  In California, Baja California, Baja California Sur, and Sonora, desalination plants are “being planned, under construction, or in operation”; even inland states in the southwestern U.S. are looking towards the glistening Pacific for their own supply of freshwater.  Across the American West and southwards into Mexico, building plans and climactic changes point to the invariable expansion of the...

This week, the Turkish Minister of Forestry and Water Affairs reported that Turkey will establish a $300 million (USD) desalination plant for water-deprived Palestinians.^[1]  While the daily capacity of the newly planned facility is not clear—it may well exceed that of an existing EU-funded desalination plant which will eventually provide clean water for 150,000 Gazans (for whom more than 95% of the existing water supply is unfit for consumption).  According to the International Middle East Media Center, “the project is big-ticket”...

Diablo Canyon—the nuclear power plant that provides California with 7 percent of its electricity—will soon close.  In 2024 and 2025, the plant will shut down its two reactors to implement “lower-cost zero-carbon energy sources.”  This decision was the result of extensive negotiations conducted by the owner of the plant, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), unions, and environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and the Natural Resources Defence Council.^[1]  

The power plant’s desalination facility, which can...

Doosan Heavy Industries has landed a $185.9 million desalination deal in Iran.  The South Korean company won the contract from Iran’s Sazeh Sazan Company, to build a seawater reverse osmosis plant in the country.^[1]  According to Doosan, the deal is “the first SWRO procurement a foreign company clinched from Iran since international sanctions were lifted early this year.”^[2]

The city of Bandar Abbas, the capital of Iran’s Hormozgan Province, will house the project.  In October 2018, once construction is completed, the plant...

The Cypriot government will spend approximately 50 million on desalinated water this year.^[1]  The reservoirs in Cyprus are currently at 34 percent of their capacity—23 percent less full than they were last year at this time.  Faring worst among the country’s dams is the largest one, the Kouris, which is now at 16 percent capacity.  

Despite this intensive water scarcity, Andreas Manoli, the director of the water development department, has said that the state will not cut water supplies to the public, including farmers. ...

Last week, EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn visited Gaza’s EU-funded seawater desalination plant. Mr. Hahn, responsible for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, spoke directly to the dire need for the plant in Palestine: “Water and natural resources have been significantly damaged after the continuous years of closure and conflicts in Gaza. As a consequence, nearly 95% of water in Gaza is considered unfit for human consumption. Therefore we are supporting this plant that will provide clean fresh water for 150,000...

By 2019, Egypt plans to build 5 desalination plants.^[1]  A US$98.6 million loan from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development funds the multi-part project to develop the Sinai Peninsula. Once completed, El Tor will become home to the largest plant, off the shores of South Sinai, and Ras Sedr, Abu Zenima, Daha, and Nuwaiba, will house the other four plants. 

Baja California officials are reportedly building a desalination plant in San Quintín without permits.^[2]  Governor Francisco Vega de Lamadrid announced the start...

In mid-May, Hong Kong’s government opened T-Park—the world’s largest sewage treatment plant.  The plant has the capacity to treat waste from the city’s 7.2 million residents.^[1]  This facility heralds a significant transition in “Hong Kong’s waste-to-energy journey.”^[2]  The “T”, after all, stands for transformation.

The complex uses a variety of advanced technologies, including desalination and power generation, to treat up to 2,000 tonnes of waste per day—and to decrease the volume of sludge by 90 percent.  T-Park’s...

Last week, California officials suspended mandatory state-wide reductions in water use.  Local communities were told “to set their own conservation standards.”^[1]  This swift legislative change is a drastic one.  Last year, Governor Brown ordered all districts and the 411 suppliers to collectively cut 25 percent of their water use:  “For a year, car-obsessed L.A. went without a wash.  Suburban lawns turned sallow, then brown, until finally people gave up and spray-painted their grass green.”^[2]  In March, El...

South Africa and Iran have partnered to develop desalination plants along their respective countries’ extensive coastlines.^[1]  Both nations are in the midst of intensive drought. 

South Africa is dealing with its most severe water shortages in 30 years.  While the South African Weather Services identifies the source of the drought as El Nino, climate change is also a contributing factor in the lack of rain.  Farmers are losing business, food prices are increasing, and the government has declared 5 of its 9 provinces as “...

Later this month, Dubai’s first solar desalination plant is set to open at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.  A photovoltaic array powers the plant, which will produce 50 cubic metres of water per day.  This initiative bolsters the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050, which aims to provide 7 percent of the city’s energy from clean energy sources by 2020—and 75 percent by 2050.^[1] 

The managing director and chief executive officer of the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, has stated that...

San Diego currently imports 57 percent of its water supply—compared to 95 percent a quarter of a century ago.^[1]  As reported in the Wall Street Journal, San Diego transformed from being “one of the most vulnerable areas” during drought in California—to “one of the best prepared.”  Rather than transporting water hundreds of miles from Northern California and the Colorado River, the city now relies on treated water.  Although this has come at a great cost.  Water officials have managed more than $2 billion in investments,...

In Paphos, an ancient coastal city in southwestern Cyprus, the fate of an idle desalination plant is mired in a standoff.  According to a Cypriot paper, the government’s Water Development Department is “calling for the demolition of the temporary desalination plant” built on government land—“but the operator is refusing to flatten the area and wants to sell it instead” at a cost of 5 million (USD $5,650,500).^[1]  The plant went online in 2011, and was operational for only four months.  It was constructed in response to a...

In the Philippines, two Christian groups have offered desalination equipment to the Cebu Provincial Government, home to the country’s “second city.”^[1]  Cebu, which was Spain’s first Filipino settlement in the sixteenth century, is the country’s second most populous metropolitan area after Metro Manila.  The desalination facilities, made by Operation Blessing Foundation Philippines and The Church of the Latter-Day Saints, will alleviate some of the intensive water shortages that plague the region.  As reported in CNN, on April...

In Zambia, climate change has brought about a severe drought that threatens the viability of the hydroelectric Kariba Dam—one of the largest in the world. As reported in the New York Times, when drought previously took hold in the country, the Kariba Dam remained “a steady, and seemingly limitless, source of something rare in Africa: electricity so cheap and plentiful that Zambia could export some to its neighbors.”^[1]  The Kariba allowed Zambia’s economy to grow, and also contributed to political stability.  However, the severity...

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 Aurangabad, India, the state government is pursuing the possible construction of a desalination plant near Mumbai to ameliorate the “perennial water scarcity” in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra state.^[1]  Years of limited rainfall, crop failure, and insufficient social support services has spurred a suicide epidemic among Marathwada’s farmers.  In 2015—when Marathwada reported the highest post-Monsoon rainfall deficit in India—more than 1,100 farmers committed suicide across the region’s eight districts (among 3,000...

In San Luis Obispo County, local officials support the proposal to expand the desalination plant of Diablo Canyon Power Plant.^[1]   The power plant produces 7 percent of the California residents’ electricity needs, and its desalination facility is capable of producing 5,678 cubic metres of water a day—although it currently produces 40 percent of its full capacity.  After the proposed expansion, the desalination plant would supply up to 1,604,000 cubic metres of water a year to South County residents. 

This week, San Luis...

In Baja California, the Mexican company NSC Agua is hoping to build a ground-breaking desalination project that would become the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere.^[1]  However, as reported in the San Diego Union-Tribune, the two groups that jointly proposed to build the plant are suing each other in U.S. and Mexican courts.

Since June 2015, San Diego resident Gough Thompson has been seeking legal redress against his partners for illegally pushing him out of the project in February 2012 “without his knowledge or consent...

In southeastern Australia, state government officials have ordered 50 million cubic metres of water from the Wonthaggi Desalination Plant.^[1]  The order will add roughly $12 AUD ($8.98 USD) to customer bills over the course of the year—amounting to a yearly total of $27 million AUD ($20,206,800 USD)—in addition to the $608 million AUD ($455,118,400 USD) cost of plant maintenance.^[2]  Steady drops in Victoria’s water storages triggered the order, with Melbourne’s dams dipping just below the 65 percent benchmark that is identified as...

At MIT, researchers are making good progress with their development of a solar-powered desalination system that can drastically increase groundwater in Indian villages.  After two years of “detective work,” Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Amos Winter, MIT PhD candidate, Natasha Wright, and a team of researchers developed a prize-winning, solar-powered, electrodialysis desalination system to address water shortages across India.^[1]

After winning USAID’s Desal Prize in April 2015, Professor Winter reports that the...

In the small coastal city of Manhattan Beach, in southwest Los Angeles, the City Council has opposed the construction of a seawater desalination plant.  The West Basin Municipal Water District proposed the construction of a $300 million (USD) plant that would produce between 75,710 and 227,100 cubic metres water a day for the West Basin’s service area, which encompasses 17 cities that are located mostly in South Bay.^[1]

The West Basin Water District is currently preparing an environmental impact report for the plant, which will be...