Plan to Desalt Ground Water in Torrance Moves Ahead : Drought: Congressional budget conferees recommend $1 million for experimental plant that would reclaim supplies tainted by seawater intrusion.

With drought drying up state reservoirs, it’s no wonder desalination plants are beginning to appear along California’s coast. But in the middle of Torrance?

That possibility became a strong likelihood last week when congressional budget conferees recommended that the federal government provide $1 million to help build an experimental desalination plant at Maple Avenue and Del Amo Boulevard.

The $3.5-million plant, to be built on land owned by Dominguez Water Co., will not draw water directly from the ocean, as desalination projects on Catalina Island and in Santa Barbara do.

Instead, the Torrance plant’s objective will be to treat underground water fouled by salt-water intrusion. If the plant proves effective and economical, organizers of the project say, others like it probably will be built in the South Bay to purify a huge plume of underground water contaminated by salt.

That could give the region a hedge against drought, they say.

“This doesn’t solve all our drought problems, but it puts this water to use,” said Richard Atwater, general manager of the West Basin Municipal Water District, a water agency serving much of the South Bay. “If we continue to have shortages, this could become a valuable supply.”

The desalination plant, scheduled to be completed next summer, is a project of the West Basin district and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Designed to treat water at a rate of 1.3 million gallons a day--or enough to supply more than 2,000 households--the facility will be operated by Dominguez Water Co. to help supply the utility’s 6,000 Torrance customers.

Although the West Basin district has pledged to pay the bulk of the construction costs, the project got a final financial boost Tuesday when U.S. House and Senate conferees agreed to include $1 million for it in their proposed federal budget for the federal fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. That is $500,000 less than the West Basin district originally requested, but Atwater says the district will cover the difference.

Hal Furman, a Washington attorney hired by the district to lobby for the project, said the conferees’ decision makes it virtually certain that the $1-million allocation will be included in the final version of the budget signed by President Bush.

“Short of the President vetoing the entire (budget) bill, it’s a done deal,” Furman said.

The desalination project’s main selling point on Capitol Hill, Furman said, was that it represents a way to reduce the South Bay’s reliance on water imported from the Colorado River and Northern California.

Local water officials estimate that South Bay aquifers contain 600,000 acre-feet of salt-tainted water--about 20% of the area’s underground water reserves. An acre-foot is 325,850 gallons, or enough to supply at least two families for a year.

For decades, intrusion of salt water into the aquifers has shut down dozens of drinking-water wells from Manhattan Beach to central Torrance. Among the closed wells are two on Dominguez Water Co. land in Torrance that will be used to lift water to the desalination plant.

The intrusion problem was caused by excessive ground-water pumping, which lowered the pressure in the area’s aquifers, allowing seawater to seep in. In response, water officials built high-pressure fresh-water injection wells along the coast in the 1960s to keep the salt water out. Los Angeles County recently completed a $10-million project to upgrade these wells after discovering that intrusion had continued.

Even if the high-pressure barriers prove solid, there is still concern that the existing brackish plume will continue moving east, fouling wells on its way. Experts say the planned Torrance plant will help show whether that water can be put to use here and in other areas of Southern California experiencing similar problems.

“This will help iron out a lot of technological bugs and determine how well a full-scale plant might operate,” said Laura Herbranson, a Bureau of Reclamation planner helping to coordinate the Torrance project. “If this shows it’s feasible to do, you can expand it into other areas.”

Local water officials who have been worried about losing their drinking-water wells eagerly await the results.

“We’ve got wells near the eastern edge of the plume,” said Charles Schaich of Torrance’s water department. “If this is feasible, then this is something we would be interested in.”