Oceanside to Discuss Whether to Keep Water Desalination Plans

The Oceanside City Council today will discuss whether it should dump plans to build a desalination plant aimed at giving the city its first local water supply in more than 40 years.

Councilwoman Nancy York said she raised the issue because she wants to find out what residents think about the project, “whether they think this is something we should do now or put off for a little bit because of the economy.”

York said she has heard from residents who oppose the $4-million project as too costly, as well as from residents who favor it.

Barry Martin, the city water utilities director, said none of the project money comes from the city’s general fund. Rather, it comes from his department’s reserves accumulated from fees paid by water users, and the fund will be repaid by a Metropolitan Water District rebate, he said.

The project, the first of its kind in the county, would take brackish water from wells in the San Luis Rey River Valley, filter out salts and metals that make it undrinkable and provide about 2 million gallons a day of fresh water to the city’s 138,000 residents, Martin said.

The water agency has already spent more than $400,000 on the project, he said, completing two wells and almost finishing a pipeline. The plant could be ready to supply about 7% of the city’s water as early as May, 1993.

Martin said the desalination plant would give the city its first local water supply since 1948, when giant aqueducts brought imported water to San Diego County.

From the mid-1800s until the aqueducts were completed, Oceanside, as well as Carlsbad, depended on well water from the San Luis Rey River Valley, Martin said.

But, by the late 1940s, the water had become polluted by salts, possibly because of fertilizer used on farms or from seepage from the ocean.

The desalination plant, which uses reverse-osmosis technology, would also give the city a badly needed emergency supply, Martin said.

Should an earthquake, such as those that struck Big Bear and Yucca Valley on Sunday, damage the aqueducts supplying San Diego County, “Oceanside would be devastated,” Martin said.

The city has storage for only about 40 million gallons of water, all in above-ground tanks scattered throughout the city, and residents use about 30 million gallons a day, he said. If disaster were to strike on a hot summer day, some parts of the city would be out of water within two hours.

York agreed that the drinking water supply is an important issue.

“I guess I raised the question based on what I’d been hearing in the community about concern over water rates and also over whether we were doing the most practical thing when it came to taking care of our emergency water supply,” she said.

She said she has heard from some residents who believe desalination has not been sufficiently proven and that the city could end up with a “white elephant” of obsolete technology that produces water at too high a cost.

But Martin said the technology has been shown to work.

“It is used worldwide . . . for over 30 years, and the technology has gotten better over the years,” he said.

The water plant should have no effect on city water rates, he said. Although desalted water is expensive, the Metropolitan Water District, which supplies Oceanside’s imported water, will rebate the difference between the local water and imported water costs, Martin said. The MWD established the rebate program to encourage development of local water supplies.