Sludge Watch ==> Desalination of ocean water proposed for Monterey Bay Area

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

Since the practice of spraying crops with sewage treatment plant effluent 
from Monterey sewage treatment plant has come under scrunity courtesy of the 
spinach E. coli outbreak, it didn't take long for this proposal to surface.

And hey....  Is Monterey sewage effluent (pretty name: 'reclaimed water') 
really being used on 'certified organic' spinach, lettuce, and other 
'certified organic' produce?
Inquiring minds want to know.


 Sep. 28, 2006

Desal's bumpy process to water
Environmental, economic, energy hurdles to leap
By KEVIN HOWE
Herald Staff Writer


Facing a labyrinth of regulations and environmental concerns, and a 
projected increase in water demand of up to 40 percent in the next 10 years, 
the Monterey Bay Area will have to come up with a water supply solution.
One that has been getting increasing credibility has been desalination, and 
representatives from area water districts, utilities and regulatory agencies 
met to talk about the issue at a morning-long workshop Wednesday at the 
Monterey Beach Hotel.
The "Be Smarter About Desal!" program, sponsored by the Association of 
Monterey Bay Area Governments, opened with the observation by executive 
director Nick Papadakis that water demand is expected to continue to 
increase on the Central Coast and that no new inland sources are expected to 
be available.
Agriculture continues to take the lion's share of water, he said: 91 percent 
in Monterey and Santa Cruz counties, and 78 percent in San Benito County, 
with the rest going to residential and commercial use. Agriculture demands 
90 percent of water in the tri-county area, Papadakis said.
Desalination technology appears to offer a way out, said David Furukawa, an 
engineer and president of Separation Consultants Inc., which designs 
desalination projects worldwide.
It is already being used in parched parts of the world, he said, such as in 
Ashkelon, Israel, which has a 76-million-gallon-a-day plant.
The biggest U.S. plant, a 25-million-gallon-per-day project in Tampa Bay, 
Fla., has yet to start up. A plant set up by Furukawa's company in Fujairah 
in the United Arab Emirates produces 37.5 million gallons a day and was 
built in two years, from planning to operation, he said.
Land-based desalination plants commonly face the problems of fluctuating 
energy costs -- turning seawater into fresh water is an energy-intensive 
process. They also must contend with the brine left over from the 
desalination process; the "impingement" or trapping of fish and other 
animals against intake filters; "entrainment," small organisms such as 
plankton and fish larvae being sucked into processing plants; and the 
resulting mortality to marine life, he said.
There are ways to work around these, and new filtration and separation 
technology is getting better, Furukawa said.
Asked about avoiding environmental and regulatory pitfalls by using 
ship-based rather than shore-based plants, Furukawa said the Russians tried 
the system using an outdated nuclear submarine as a power source and ran 
into "numerous problems" getting power to the ship and the processed water 
ashore.
Present at the session was Charles "Skip" Griffin, vice president of PBS&J 
Engineers, which with Water Standard Co. has designed and patented an 
ocean-going desalination plant that would operate from a ship.
Water Standard plans to build a fleet of them with capacities ranging from 
50 million to 200 million gallons per day, Griffin said in a presentation 
Wednesday afternoon at the Embassy Suites Hotel Monterey Bay in Seaside. It 
has solved the power problem by incorporating two turbojet engines running 
on biodiesel fuel and sending the water ashore in a variety of ways --  
pumped ashore by an undersea pipeline or unloaded at dockside from a shuttle 
tanker.
His ships, he said, wouldn't face many of the permit problems required of 
shore-based desalination plants -- outfalls, construction, disturbing the 
seashore or seabed, intake and outfall pipe -- that would be regulated by 
state, federal and local officials.
Shipborne systems can also be moved out of the way of threatening storms or 
tsunamis, or moved to serve other locations at times when their product 
isn't needed locally, he said.
More than 20 desalination projects have been proposed in California, seven 
of them in the Monterey Bay Area, said Brad Damitz of the Monterey Bay 
National Marine Sanctuary.
If all of them were realized, he said, they would constitute a 70-fold 
increase in the state's desalination capacity -- 458 million gallons per 
day, or 6 percent of the state water supply.
Environmental problems associated with desalination plants, he said, include 
those brought on by construction, disturbance of the sea bed for intake 
pipes, changes in water temperature and salinity affecting wildlife. But 
they can have positive impacts too.
Desalination plants, Damitz said, produce high-quality water, free of 
contaminants, and offset extractions of water inland that deplete streams 
and rivers or allow seawater intrusion into coastal freshwater aquifers.
Most of what is known about the effects of intake pipes and outfalls on the 
coastal environment has been learned by studying what happens at coastal 
power plants, according to one panel of scientists.
On the issue of entrainment, Jonathon Toal, senior scientist for Kinetics 
Laboratories, said studies of coastal power plants using once-through water 
cooling systems have not shown that the larvae, plankton and other small 
organisms killed in the process have affected coastal adult fish 
populations. Such systems draw water from the ocean, cycle it through the 
plant and discharge it back.
More than 90 percent of larvae and plankton die anyway, he said, so the 
small percentage killed by the power plants doesn't seem to have a 
significant impact.
Reviewing the permit process for coastal desalination plants, Linette 
Almond, deputy director and engineering manager for the city of Santa Cruz, 
said if and when the city gets the permits it needs for a proposed 
2.5-million-gallon-per-day desalination plant, it will require 24 
signoffs -- five from federal agencies, 12 from the state and seven from 
local agencies.

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/local/15627665.htm