Desperate from Drought, California Turns to Desalination
A worker among some of the 2,000 pressure vessels used to convert seawater into fresh water through reverse osmosis in the western hemisphere's largest desalination plant in Carlsbad, California, on March 11, 2015.
Photographer: Gregory Bull/AP PhotoAs California battled its last severe drought in the early 1990s, Santa Barbara spent $34 million on a desalination plant that proved too costly to keep running when rain returned. Now, the city can’t afford to keep it idle.
“Show me how we conserve our way out of this if these conditions continue,” said Joshua Haggmark, water resources manager for the city, located 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, during a tour of the facility he’s working to reboot by the end of next year. “If a business doesn’t have the water it needs to do whatever it needs to do, they’re going to find it somewhere else and they’ll leave.”