October 14, 1998

Water, water everywhere

"With enough time, money and skill I can do anything", somebody once said. The unspoken corollary: is it worth taking the time, the effort needed to achieve the skill and especially the money needed to accomplish the goal involved? Quite often the answer is no.

A Pacifica citizen's committee spent a number of years, earlier this decade, examining desalination; using the ocean to satisfy Pacifica's need for water instead of buying it from San Francisco and importing it from the Sierra. San Francisco has a strangle hold on the water supply of San Mateo county. It owns tens of thousands of acres of watershed within the county. It owns the rights to Hetch Hetchy reservoir. At first glance desalination is attractive. The ocean is right there. It's "free." It's inexhaustible. It would free us forever of dependence on others. There would never be another drought problem in Pacifica. After a number of years, the committee, of which I was a member, pretty well concluded: desalination would work, with enough money thrown at it, and enough skill, but it's not a good idea. The ocean has tremendous power to destroy. That includes the equipment needed to suck in seawater and bring it across the breakers. Whatever process we would use to take the salts out of the water would use a lot of energy. Energy equals money. There are many methods, including reverse osmosis, distillation, and some others that are new and highly experimental, including at least one being explored at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

There is little economy of scale in desalination. That means building a really big, economical operation and supplying water to neighboring cities to compete with the San Francisco Water Department is an impractical dream.

Desalination would multiply costs by a factor of two, three, perhaps four. It may make sense for a rich, dry city like Santa Barbara. Desal does not make sense for Pacifica. We would be paying dearly for what is at best a highly overpriced insurance policy.

I commend the North Coast County district board and its former General Manager for setting up the committee, for cooperating fully with it, and for setting aside funds for the highly professional report that resulted. With a whole ocean of water out there, it would have been shortsighted not to explore the options. On the other hand, it would not have been prudent to invest in desal, even if El Nino had not come along to make our drought fears look foolish, at least in the short term. There will be another drought. There will be an earthquake to break the connection to Hetch Hetchy. Water costs will rise. When they do, desal will once again look good.

When desal gets more efficient, uses less energy or less costly energy, when ways are found to bring water across the breakers at less expense, when presently unknown new methods come along, we should re-examine our options. Until then desal will remain a pipe dream. (BF tailpiece)

Paul Azevedo has loved the breaking waves on our western shore for more than 35 years. His column has been a part of the Tribune for the past 23 years.