Wishing for a Well : Desalination: In a first step toward building a plant, crews test a Ventura beach to see if it’s possible to draw much water from the sand.

Curtis Hopkins grabbed a wet lump of grayish-brown sand and peered at it closely. He rubbed it through his fingers and examined the gravel in it. Satisfied, he plopped it down.

“That’s the kind of sand you want,” said Hopkins, a hydro-geologist who was testing beach sands south of Ventura Harbor on Wednesday.

Hopkins and his crew are conducting test drills this week to see if it’s possible to draw large amounts of water from local beach sands. It is the first step toward building a desalination plant that residents approved at the polls in November.

“Everything else hinges on this,” said Hopkins, who is heading the $175,000 study. “Before they can do some design work, they need to know what they’re designing around.”

Consultants will not know until early or mid-fall whether it is feasible to use beach wells, Hopkins said. The option would be an offshore well or pipe.

If beach sands are porous enough, then wells would be constructed to draw water from sand. If the sand contains too much silt, clay or other materials, then a pipe or well would have to be constructed offshore in order to pump seawater, Hopkins said.

Consultants are hoping to use beach wells rather than a well offshore, Hopkins said.

“The sand and the gravel would act as a natural filtration,” Hopkins said.

Steve Bennett, a Nordhoff High School teacher who helped lead the campaign to build a desalination plant in Ventura, said that from an environmental viewpoint, beach wells would be preferable to offshore pipes or wells.

“It’s superior. It has fewer impacts,” said Bennett, an environmental advocate. “You can use the sand to filter, and you get much better water in the system, and you save money in the long run because you don’t need as many pre-treatment facilities.”

A beach well would involve placing a concrete tube-like structure called a caisson into the sand, and perforated pipes would extend out from it. Water from the sands would seep through the pipes and collect in the caisson. The water would then be pumped out of the caisson and sent to the desalination plant, where the salt would be removed.

Hopkins is test-drilling five sites along the city’s coastline. He did the first site about two weeks ago, and expects to finish drilling by early next week.

“It was not very promising,” Hopkins said, referring to the first test site on San Buenaventura Beach.

At about 30 feet deep, the sand was too shallow, Hopkins said. Consultants are planning to dig beach wells from 50 feet to 70 feet deep. The test drills penetrate about 100 feet into the ground, Hopkins said. Other test sites include the Pierpont Beach area and near the mouth of the Ventura River.

Another factor that hydro-geologists are looking at is how much water can be drawn from the beach sands.

“We need 17.5 million gallons a day,” said project manager Glenn McPherson. That amount of seawater would then be filtered and would produce 7 million to 8 million gallons of drinkable water per day, he said.

If initial drilling tests are favorable, then trial wells would be built to test both how much water can be produced and its quality, he said.

The alternate is laying a pipe on the ocean floor to draw in water, Hopkins said.

“It would be sucking in straight seawater, and whatever plant or animal life floated by,” Hopkins said. “You might get little guys like starfish, but you wouldn’t get fish or sea lions.”

In the fall advisory vote, Ventura residents voted 55% to 45% in favor of building a desalination plant instead of importing water from Northern California.

McPherson said environmental studies will begin next year, and the plant is expected to be ready in 1997 if the city of Ventura gives final approval to the project. The City Council already has authorized studies on where to locate the plant.

Proposed Beach Well In an initial move toward constructing a desalination plant, hydrogeologists are test drilling sites in Ventura to see if it is feasible to use beach wells to draw water. If consultants recommend using beach wells, a concrete caisson would be put underground and perforatd pipes would extend out from it. Water from the sands would go through the pipes and collect in the caisson. Pumps in the cassion would then send the water to the deslilnation plant.