Costs May End Plan for Water Plant in Baja : Desalination: Study shows that the price of desalted seawater would be a costly $1,600 an acre foot. Regular water supplies cost $261 an acre foot.

The Metropolitan Water District, the giant water wholesaler of the Southland, is backing away from involvement in a proposed desalination plant in Baja California after a study showed that producing and delivering desalted water from there could cost more than six times the current price of treated water.

Water officials across Southern California expressed disappointment about the new, higher estimated cost of extracting fresh water from the sea, at a plant designed to produce 100 million gallons of desalted water per day.

According to a feasibility study released this week, the price of the desalinated water would be about $1,600 an acre-foot, as compared to today’s price of $261. Many water officials said that price may be prohibitively high.

Most of the water produced at the plant would likely be piped over the border for use in San Diego County.

At the MWD, which contributed $100,000 toward the cost of the nine-month study, officials said they have evaluated the study results and recommended against involvement in the Baja California Desalination Project, which would cost more than $1.5 billion to build.

“MWD staff at this point doesn’t intend to study it any further,” said Don Adams, director of resources at MWD, the region’s water wholesaler. “These matters are up to the board. But I think the board will go along with that. We’re pretty definite.”

Adams’ comments echoed a recent memo to MWD’s board of directors from Carl Boronkay, MWD’s general manager.

“The fact is, we must seek to ‘fill-up’ the Colorado River Aqueduct, ‘firm-up’ our entitlement to State Project water and make efficient use of the water available before we take on large-scale seawater desalination,” the memo said.

MWD’s flagging interest in the project, which would combine a desalination facility with an electrical power plant, was not good news to Bechtel Power Corp. and Coastal Gas Corp., the partnership that proposed the project earlier this year to help address the problems of drought-stricken Southern California.

David C. Nerell, a Bechtel project manager, said Thursday that while the cost of desalting water was higher than his company had hoped, “We still have a great deal of interest in this project. We have hopes that we can move forward with it.”

MWD’s attitude, however, is having an impact on how other project co-sponsors regard the project. At the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, for example, Jerry Gewe, engineer of water resources, said that officials have opted to put other projects ahead of desalination.

“In the same manner that MWD is losing steam . . . for purchasing water from the Baja project, the same would be true of the city of Los Angeles,” he said. “We’re looking basically at doing reclamation projects in the $500- to $700-per-acre-foot range and are not really enthusiastic about moving up into the $1,500 and $1,600 range. (We’ll) look at desalination as those projects run out a decade or so from now.”

In San Diego, meanwhile, county water officials said that if MWD does not participate, their involvement in the project will probably have to be scaled down--or abandoned altogether.

Gordon Hess, the San Diego County Water Authority’s water resources planning manager, said that he had hoped the Baja desalination plant could produce fresh water for about $1,000 per acre-foot (enough water to service 2 million families for a year). He said that if the county moves forward on the project without MWD, it will have to raise its rates.

“Our water rates would have to increase significantly for us to purchase this (water) on our own,” Hess said, estimating that an acre-foot of water that now costs $323 in San Diego would go up to nearly $600.

San Diego County, which buys 95% of its water from MWD, is MWD’s biggest and neediest customer.

At a meeting of the San Diego County Water Authority board of directors Thursday, board members did not decide for or against the project, opting to wait until a county water resources plan is completed early next year. But when the $1,600-an-acre-foot price tag was announced, several directors balked.

“That’s a whole lot more than we pay to bring water down from the Delta--and that’s with a 2,000-foot lift over the Tehachapies,” said director William D. Taylor, who represents the Bueno Colorado Municipal Water District on the board.

“There’s a reasonableness question here. It (the price) astounds me,” said Director Herbert H. Stickney, who represents the Rainbow Municipal Water District. According to the study, nearly one-quarter of the price was due to the cost of transporting the desalted water 25 miles north (and 1,600 feet up) over the border.

Hess, the San Diego County water resources manager, said another proposed desalination plant at San Diego Gas & Electric’s South Bay power plant may prove to be cheaper because the water would not have to be transported great distances. A feasibility study of that project will be completed in late January, he said.