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Californians can drink tapped water from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Malibu a few years later. That is, when a company’s new desalination technology has proven viable.
Oceanwell Co. anchors approximately 20 40-foot-long devices called pods to the seabed several miles offshore, and use them to carry salt water and pump refined fresh water into the shore in a pipeline. The company calls the concept a “farm” and tests prototypes of the pods in a reservoir at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Pilot research supported by the Las Virgenes Municipal Water district is closely monitored by managers of several large water agencies in Southern California. They hope that if new technologies prove economical, they can avoid the shortcomings of the environment of large coastal desalinated plants in cities and suburban areas that are vulnerable to shortages during drought.
“It could provide Californians with reliable water supplies that don’t produce toxic salt water that affects marine life, and there’s also no intake that sucks life from the ocean.” “If this technology is viable, proven scalable and cost-effective, it would significantly improve climate resilience.”
He walks towards the prototype of the desalination pod being tested at Mark Golay and Las Virgenes Reservoir in Oceanwell, vice-commander of Calleguas Municipal Water District.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
In a recent demonstration at Las Virgenes Reservoir, the company’s water policy strategist Tim Quinn saw a 12-foot long cylindrical prototype being lowered underwater on cables.
“We only draw freshwater from the ocean. Salt stays there at low concentrations that are not environmental issues,” Quinn said.
Testing at Las Virgenes Reservoir helps company engineers see how the system works when exclude plankton and bring it back into the water. When the pod got close to 50 feet underwater, Mark Goley, the company’s engineering project director, pumped and water from the spigot.
The next step expected later this year will include conducting tests in the ocean by lowering the pod from a fixed boat to a depth of about five miles offshore.
“We hope to build a farm under the sea in 2028,” Quinn said.
Quinn previously worked for California’s water agency for 40 years, but joined Menlo Park-based Oceanwell two years ago, pledged to ensure new technology would ease the state’s water conflict.
“Ocean de Saru has never played a prominent role in the future of California’s waters,” he said.
Managers of seven water agencies in Southern California hold monthly meetings on the project, studying what investments in new infrastructure, such as pipelines and pump stations, are needed to transport the water the company plans to sell from the coast to the system.
Leaders of the Lasville Genes Municipal Water District, which are leading the effort, held an event at the reservoir on Friday to showcase how to test the technology. The pilot study is supported by more than $700,000 grants from the Metropolitan Water District in Southern California and the U.S. Bureau of Regeneration.
We must secure additional permits from the federal government and states. Also, we have not yet estimated the amount of energy the process will require. This will be a major factor in determining costs.
However, water managers and other experts agree that this concept offers several advantages in building traditional desalination plants on the coast.
The pods are located about 1,300 feet deep, which could require significantly less power to operate the system’s land pump.
Coastal desalinated plants usually inhales and kills plankton and fish larvae, but the pod has a patented intake system that the company says brings small sea creatures back into the surrounding water into unharmed water. And while coastal plants usually emit ultra-salted saltwater waste that can harm the ecosystem, subsea pods release unconcentrated saltwater, dissipating without taking such environmental charges.
Golay reduces the prototype to Las Virgenes Reservoir for testing.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
If the technology proves viable on a large scale, it would help Southern California rely on a decline in imports from the Joaquin River Delta and Colorado Rivers in Sacramento.
Research shows that human-induced climate change is driving the worsening of droughts in the western United States. The Gov. Gavin Newsom administration predicts that the average amount of water available from the state’s water project reservoirs and aqueducts will be able to shrink from 13% to 23% over the next 20 years as temperatures slow down snowballs and strengthen droughts.
Southern California Water Agency is moving forward with plans to build new facilities that turn wastewater into clean drinking water, and is also investing in projects to acquire more stormwater.
In addition to economic viability, other questions need to be answered throughout the study, Gold said, including how much the system filters the lifespan of a small ocean, the amount of maintenance required, and whether pods and hoses can pose a risk of whales entangled.
Oceanwell executives and engineers say their systems are designed to protect marine life and eliminate environmental negatives from other technologies.
The conceptual illustration shows the so-called water farm where Oceanwell plans to set up its California coast.
(Ocean Well)
Oceanwell CEO Robert Bergstrom has been working on desalination projects since 1996, previously constructing and operating plants in the US Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and other Caribbean Islands, and founding Seven Seas Water.
When Belxtrom retired, he moved to California and eventually decided to return to work to develop technology to solve California’s water problems.
“I had a big idea,” Bergstrom said. “This was something I wanted to be a big lift to get this done. It’s a moonshot.”
Founded in 2019, Oceanwell currently has 10 employees. Its main investor is Charlie McGarrow, a former partner at investment banking company Goldman Sachs. One of its major investors is Kubota, a Japanese-based company.
Based on the Bergstrom concept, Chief Technology Officer Michael Porter and the engineering team have been working on design. They built their first prototype in Porters Kitchen in San Diego County and conducted initial testing in the lab.
“It was inspired by the California environmental community pointing out issues that need to be resolved,” Bergstrom said.
The desalinated plants operate in parts of California, including the largest facility in Carlsbad in the country and small-scale plants on Santa Catalina Island. However, the proposal for new coastal desalinated plants has produced strong opposition. In 2022, the California Coastal Commission rejected plans for a large desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Opponents argued that water is not needed in the area and raised concerns about environmental costs and harm.
The traditional shallow intake problem depicting large amounts of algae, fish larvae and plankton leaves in the deep waters, Bergstrom said.
“We have much cleaner water to deal with,” Bergstrom said. “It’s a very barren desert that we chose to find, and as a result, we don’t have much to rule out.”
Although a specific site for the first water farm has not yet been selected, the company plans to install nearly five miles offshore when it connects the pipeline and copper power cables to the land.
Putting the system underwater will likely reduce energy costs by around 40%, Bergstrom said.
Bergstrom and his colleagues promote their invention as a completely different approach. They say it doesn’t really desalinate the seawater in the traditional sense, but rather harvests fresh water from a device that functions like a sea well.
After their first water farm, they imagine building more along the coast. Belxtrom believes it will help solve the challenges of water shortages in California and beyond.
Various locations off the coast of California are suitable for developing water farms, from San Diego to Monterey, Belxtrom said many water sculpture countries with deep offshore waters, such as Chile, Spain and North African countries.
“I think it’s going to rebuild the world more than California’s water,” Quinn said.
Under the company’s plans, the first water farm will initially have 20-25 pods, expanding with additional pods to supply about 60 million gallons of water per day, sufficient for around 250,000 households.
Six other water agencies, including Las Virgenes, La Water and Power of Water and Power, and Calleguas Municipal Water District, are collaborating in research into how water can be delivered directly from projects and how inland agencies can indirectly benefit from the exchange of supplies with coastal people.
“We rely so heavily on imported water and need to diversify,” said David Pedersen, general manager of Lasville Genes. “We need to develop new local waters that are resilient to drought, which will help us adapt to climate change.”
His district relies on supplies almost entirely imported from the state’s water projects, serving more than 75,000 people in Agora Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Westlake Village and surrounding areas.
Mike McNutt, the public relations and communications manager for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, tastes the water flowing from Spigot after passing through a prototype desalination system in the Las Virgenes Reservoir.
(Allen J. Scheven/Los Angeles Times)
During the drought from 2020 to 2022, the district was under severe water restrictions, with customers reducing use by nearly 40%. Pedersen hopes that by around 2030 the district will be able to access the sea.
Ian Prichard, assistant general manager at Calleguas Municipal Water District, which supplies water to approximately 650,000 people in Ventura County, said one of the big questions is how much the system will use.
“If the technology works and they can bring it to the market and we can afford to bring water into our service area, that’s great,” Pritchard said. “The big test is that they can produce water at the rate we want to pay.”
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