Desalination is doable in California

The Feb. 1 Times-call had another article regarding the Colorado River crisis, with no resolution in sight. As I wrote in a previous letter, in the long term, additional water supplies must be found. I suggested seven large desalination plants producing about 2 million acrefeet per year (maf/yr) on the California coast could help.

A July 14, 2019, Forbes article indicates that California needs desalination production of over 3 maf/yr just for the Southern California coastal area and the Central Valley. By intrastate agreements, 3.85 maf/yr of California’s allotment of 4.4 maf/ yr of Colorado River water goes to irrigation districts in the far southeast corner of the state near Yuma, Ariz. A number of desalination plants could be built on the upper Gulf of California to at least partially offset that requirement plus Arizona’s 2.8 maf/yr and Mexico’s 1.5 maf/yr allotments.

No new technology is required, so many of the needed desalination plants could be built in a relatively short time if the political will were there. And money currently being wasted on solar and wind power boondoggles would more than pay for all of them.

Per the EIA, the U.S. currently has about 204 GW of wind and solar capacity installed but, because of its intermittent nature, it is only able to produce about 56 GW on average. Fossil fuels, which Net Zero enthusiasts want to replace, produce about 286 GW. It would take about 1,042 GW of wind and solar capacity to replace it.

The EIA states the installed cost of wind and solar is about $1,500 per kw. That’s $1.5 billion per GW, making that 1,042 GW cost about $1.56 trillion, not including transmission lines, back-up batteries or the overbuild necessary to charge the batteries. That would pay for one heck of a lot of desalination plants.