Anyone who lives in California for any length of time realizes that the water supply for our state is a contentious issue. Along the Central Coast, the most recent issue is the use of desalination – an energy-intensive process that removes salt from seawater. The technology in use is called reverse osmosis and involves using powerful pumps to force water through specialized membranes which exclude charged ions (salt, for example) but allow water and other neutral species to pass through.

The City Council of Santa Cruz and the Water Department have moved forward with a proposal to build a trial desalination project plant on the Westside of Santa Cruz at the Long Marine Lab site. In November of 2005, the City Council approved a contract with the global engineering firm Camp Dresser and Mckee, INC (CDM) in the amount of $3.2 million. No construction has yet taken place, but the proposal is moving forward.

While most proposals on the table for desalination in the Monterey Bay area involve the construction of ‘research pilot plants’ in Santa Cruz and Moss Landing, this may simply be a deceptive maneuver whose real intent is to use the permits for the ‘research plants’ as a gateway to building large-scale desalination systems. Read more