The company “plans to anchor about two dozen 40-foot-long devices, called pods, to the seafloor several miles offshore and use them to take in saltwater and pump purified fresh water to shore in a pipeline,” the Times reports. Before that, though, the concept has to be proved, which is why OceanWell “is testing a prototype of its pod at a reservoir in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains.”
Unlike conventional desalination plants that operate on the coastline, the water farms will be submerged in as much as 400 meters of water.
“Seawater desalination systems are gigantic, expensive, energy-sucking beasts that take up valuable space on seaside coasts,” says CleanTechnica, which covers the cleantech industry, while the pod system is less obtrusive and, according to proponents, more friendly to the environment.
The Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which is partnering in a sense with the company, says “this initiative aims to prove the efficacy of OceanWell’s proprietary water purification technology, and ultimately, provide a stable, climate-resilient source of water for a region that has been hard-hit by drought in recent years.” One company official is optimistic that OceanWell will be building below-the-surface water farms by 2028.
It’s understandable that, as the Times reports, the project “is being closely watched by managers of several large water agencies in Southern California,” who are hoping the new technology will be economical, and possibly “supply more water for cities and suburbs that are vulnerable to shortages during droughts, while avoiding the environmental drawbacks of large coastal desalination plants.”
Beleaguered Californians who pay more than anyone else in the country for just about everything will want to keep their eyes on the pilot project’s progress, as well.
“Millions of Californians are set to see significant water rate hikes over the next few years,” SF Gate reported in early March, “with prices for essential water supplies jumping by double-digit percentage points. In one large city, cumulative increases could see prices jump about 70% just in the next five years.”
It’s not clear yet how the water farms will affect consumer pricing. Energy costs are expected to be 40% lower, “because unlike a coastal plant that must pump larger quantities of seawater,” says the Times, “it will pressurize and pump a smaller quantity of fresh water to shore,” so it seems reasonable to expect prices to fall with the additional supply online. But how much is unknown.
A company spokesperson said “OceanWell isn’t able to comment on consumer pricing at this time, as there are several initial logistical steps to complete this year. However, fundamentally the costs to build and operate an OceanWell system should be substantially lower than conventional desalination systems, so the savings will be significant.”
In San Diego County, rates will increase 14% this year. San Diego is also home to the nation’s largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, which produces roughly 54 million gallons a day. But that facility meets only about 10% of the region’s water needs. There could have been an additional 50 million gallons available for Southern California, but the California Coastal Commission killed – apparently with the input of someone dressed as some sort of plankton – a proposed Huntington Beach desalination plant in 2022, citing, among other factors, possible environmental harms.
It seems the OceanWell project, however, has the approval of eco-activists. Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Times that the pod system “can potentially provide us Californians with a reliable water supply that doesn’t create toxic brine that impacts marine life, nor does it have intakes that suck the life out of the ocean.”
Should the technology prove “to be viable, scalable and cost-effective, it would greatly enhance our climate resilience,” he added.
It’s encouraging to see those who’ve long trafficked in scarcity adopt a mindset of abundance, or at least moving in that direction on one project, one that could change the future of a state whose worst enemies have been its policymakers of the last three decades.
Kerry Jackson is the Wiliam Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.
