Largest Desalination Plant in the Hemisphere to Supply 7% of San Diego's Water

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in environment on (#2SSJ)
story imageAt 70 percent complete, and slated to be open and operating November of 2015, the Carlsbad Desalination Project is predicted to be, at 50-million gallons per day, the largest and most energy-efficient seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere. And it will supply enough water to meet about 7 percent of San Diego county's water needs.

The water authority has pledged to buy the desalinated water at $2,014 to $2,257 per acre-foot. About twice the cost of traditional water supplies, but about half that of desalination plants just 10 years ago. An acre-foot is enough to supply two homes for a year. During the first full year of production - in 2016 - the desalinated water will add about $5.14 per month to the typical household's water bill, according to the water authority.

"This source, since it's not dependent on rainfall and snow melt, is the (region's) first drought-proof source of water."

But they're not going all-in with desalination. San Diego city's plan to purify wastewater to drinking-water standards is the next major item on their agenda. The city envisions constructing a water-purification plant that can generate 83 million gallons of drinking water per day by 2035. The purification plant could also help eliminate the need for $1.8 billion in overdue upgrades to the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant by reducing the amount of wastewater that must be piped to sea.

Re: How much water / house? (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-09-24 12:24 (#2STR)

Your water use was 748 gallons.1
Your neighborhood average water use was 7,998 gallons.
That's an incredibly low figure. I'd guess you eat out all the time, don't wash your own car, have no plants, don't do laundry, take very short showers days apart, and more. Or otherwise are away from home a great deal of the time. While that behavior may reduce your home water bill, you're still using lots of water, and in a way that's far more expensive than just using water at home.

With the standard 2.5 GPM shower head, 750 gallons is just 5 hours of running the shower per month, total. Some people take 5-minute showers, or skip quite a few days in-between, but most don't, and the average would also go through the roof in a household of several people, so that's not really a practical level of water usage to expect of people, except in cases of extreme rationing.

And showers aren't the biggest water users... Toilets consume more water, so you need to cut your showering time down to 1/3rd of that to fit the numbers, still. Throw in some dish washing, outdoor plant watering, and you get up to those big "average" numbers quickly.
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