Desalination Can Provide Cost-Effective, Reliable Water For Coastal California Residents

Huntington Beach, CALIF. – With the state reaching historically low snowpack levels and the Governor calling for mandatory water usage cuts, Poseidon Water is working with coastal California communities to provide affordable, sustainable drinking water to their residents and businesses. Their efforts have resulted in the largest seawater desalination facility in the United States nearing completion in Carlsbad, CA, and another similar sized project being developed in Huntington Beach, CA. Each of these facilities will provide 50 million gallons of drinking water per day to local residents from the Pacific Ocean.

"We are proud to provide cost-effective, drought-proof drinking water to hundreds of thousands of California residents," said Scott Maloni, Vice President of Poseidon Water. “With the Governor’s recent water reductions in response to an unprecedented drought, we will continue to work with coastal communities such as Huntington Beach to develop environmentally friendly and reliable desalinated water supplies at a low cost to consumers.”
 
By using advanced reverse osmosis technology, Poseidon has driven down the cost of desalinated water significantly. Current economic projections have shown that the cost per gallon of desalinated water would be much less than a penny per gallon, and that the total additional cost of desalinated water for households would amount to about a dollar per month based on average water use. In fact, Orange County Water District is considering a term sheet for the desalinated water from Poseidon’s Huntington Beach project that would equate to less than $0.005 per gallon.
 
Currently, much of the water in southern California is imported from sources out-of-state or from northern California. The drought, however, has caused those sources to increase in price and decrease in availability. Since 1978, the cost in Southern California for imported water has escalated by over 6% on an average annual basis, and is projected to continue to rise in the future as regulatory restriction and climate change place additional pressure on existing water supplies.
 
In contrast, over the last 20 years the cost of seawater desalination has been cut in half as the reverse osmosis technology has evolved. Desalination customers will have greater price certainty and reliability because water rates won’t fluctuate based on rainfall or imported water availability.
 
“The potential for economic losses from the drought could be devastating for local communities up and down California’s coast,” said Maloni. “However, residents and businesses in San Diego can look forward to decades of reliable drinking water thanks to our Carlsbad facility. We are excited about being able to provide the same peace of mind to Orange County residents with our proposed Huntington Beach facility.”
 
Poseidon Water specializes in developing and financing water infrastructure projects, primarily seawater desalination and water treatment plants. These projects are implemented through innovative public-private partnerships in which private enterprise assumes the developmental and financial risks. Download the full article.