Legislator Sees Ocean of Answers to Drought Woes

When Assemblyman Richard Polanco gazes at the Pacific, he sees much more than surfboards and sailboats. The Los Angeles Democrat sees the answer to California’s drought.

And, on Tuesday, when he opened the 1991 Global Seawater Desalination Seminar in San Diego with a rousing keynote address, it seemed the 150 water experts in the audience got a glimpse of it, too.

“The time has come for desalting the Pacific Ocean. The time has come to make the ocean our newest reservoir,” Polanco said in a speech in which he lamented Southern California’s continuing dependence on imported water and the state’s persistent water delivery problems. “For years, California strategy has been to look eastward to the Sierras or north to the Delta. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time we ought to look west.”

Imagine, Polanco said, a bottomless reservoir--an independent source that doesn’t rely on water treaties and entitlements, on politics and pipelines. Imagine that, in addition to conserving, reclaiming, and banking imported water, Southern California could produce its own.

This goal of self-sufficiency--especially attractive to San Diego, which imports 95% of its water--is the focus of the two-day desalination seminar, which has drawn experts from as far as Saudi Arabia.

Co-sponsored by the San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District, the region’s two biggest water agencies, the seminar is intended to compare state-of-the-art desalting technologies--how they work and whether they offer a long-term cure for drought.

Polanco’s effusive optimism aside, the seminar will also delve into what its promotional brochures call the “real costs” of desalination--costs that are, by all accounts, high.

For example, the CWA is studying the feasibility of a power generation and desalination plant in Baja California that would produce 100 million gallons of fresh water a day--enough to supply 200,000 families for a year. But, by CWA’s estimates, that water would cost about four times what the authority now pays for imported water and nearly twice the cost of developing other imported sources.

“There is no one silver bullet” that will solve San Diego’s water needs, said Byron Buck, the CWA’s director of water resources planning. He estimated that, by the year 2010, San Diego County could face a 25% water shortage. “But San Diego is going to diversify. And desalination will play a role.”

Gary Snyder, an MWD spokesman, agreed, saying that the region’s water wholesalers’ appetite is expected to grow so much that “it’s not something any one source is going to meet.” Aside from the high costs of desalting, there are problems associated with finding available coastal sites and with meeting strict environmental regulations.

But Polanco, who has introduced several bills designed to make desalination plants less expensive, said critics who say desalination is too expensive ought to consider the lost jobs and the ruined crops--the high cost of running out of water.

He says the cost of desalination is commonly exaggerated and claims that, when one considers the inflated rates that the CWA and its customers could pay if MWD’s cutback goals are not met, desalted seawater is a bargain.

Nevertheless, Polanco said, “Some people are still protesting . . . . What are they waiting for? The 10th dry year?”

Polanco noted that recently Gov. Pete Wilson said desalination was only appropriate for islands and deserts, “implying that it wasn’t for California.”

He continued: “Gov. Wilson was the mayor of the city of San Diego for 11 years. During all those years, just like now, San Diego imported 95% of its water, thus perpetuating a dependency more precious than oil.

“Now I hate to be the messenger delivering bad news, but that sounds like a desert to me,” he said. “It’s hot, and it’s dry. And I say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and needs lakes full of water like a duck, then it’s a duck.”