DESALINATION Desalted water could be on tap County agency agrees to fund portion of study San Diego Union Tribune - 12/7/01 By Steve La Rue, staff writer The county's regional water agency yesterday decided to take a closer look at a private firm's proposal to provide about 9 percent of the county's water needs from the Pacific Ocean. The agency authorized as much as $400,000 to study the technology and legal aspects of a proposal from Poseidon Resources of Connecticut. The firm wants to extract salt from ocean water and convert it into drinking water at a projected cost low enough to make the ocean a feasible source for additional freshwater supplies. Poseidon also wants the San Diego County Water Authority and the cities of Carlsbad and Oceanside to sign water contracts lasting as long as 30 years. The water authority is composed of 22 water-retail agencies in the county that distribute water imported from the Colorado River and Northern California. The funding is for an independent technical analysis of Poseidon's proposal for a desalination plant near the Cabrillo power plant in south Carlsbad, as well as a legal analysis of the proposed water-purchase contract, said Ken Weinberg, the authority's water resources director. "A 30-year agreement would represent well in excess of a $1 billion commitment, and we want to make sure that this plant could do what they say it can," Weinberg said. The cities of Oceanside and Carlsbad soon will decide whether to participate in the study. If they do, their cost would be proportional to the volume of desalted water they want to purchase from Poseidon. The company says the proposed plant would produce 56,000 acre-feet per year, or about 9.3 percent of the roughly 600,000 acre feet of water the county consumes each year. The water authority buys more than 400,000 acre-feet of imported river water each year from the regional Metropolitan Water District. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons -- enough water to cover a football field to a depth of 1 foot, or to serve the household needs of two four-member families for one year. Poseidon officials estimate the plant could produce high-quality drinking water for about $800 per acre-foot, nearly double the $430 that the water authority pays Metropolitan per acre-foot of imported water. But a significant amount of the desalted sea water could be added to the county's overall water supply without significantly boosting rates, water officials said. The cost of the purified sea water also could be lowered if the water authority qualifies for an Metropolitan Water District incentive program that will pay Southern California water agencies $250 for every acre-foot of desalted water they use.