California has a few interesting examples of desalination, and will be under heavy scrutiny in the near future as desalination becomes a more viable and necessary way for the state to get water from.

The Poseidon desalination plant is now open in Carlsbad, CA. The plant presents a lot of benefits. It will help provide 8-10% of San Diego county’s water needs, which will allow the county to not have to spend as much on importing water (Zetland 2016). The opening of this plant symbolizes California’s future in desalination, with 15 other plants being proposed up and down the coast. However, the billion dollar expenses of these plants will not be hidden. Businesses, residents, and agriculture managers will all pay the price of these new plants (Zetland 2016).

The addition of this desalination plant in San Diego will be interesting in a few respects. Firstly, it will decrease dependency on imported water from different districts. Secondly, it will possibly create tension between different social interest groups, like land developers, environmental groups, and politicians, as discussed previously (Fikes 2015). However, it will also be interesting to see how the plant will be utilized, since recent drought-awareness tactics have reduced water usage enough to make the use of the plant superfluous (Zetland 2016).

If this is the case, we may see a similar scenario as the Santa Barbara desalination plant, which is now being revamped for $55 million dollars. (This case study is discussed in the Economic Impacts section of the website)

A final case study within the state of California is the Monterey desalination plant, which is actually wanted by much of the population. CalAm, the local water provider, has submitted an application to build a desalination plant on the grounds that much of the residents wish for there to be a plant, despite the increased cost to them (Fikes 2015). Here, it has become a legal battle between residents and environmental groups for the construction of the plant.

In total, 14 plants are being constructed down the California coast. While there is little known about the long-lasting impacts that these plants will have (due to generally new erection of plants), California will definitely become a place of interest in the desalination debate. The intersection of politics, economy and the environment, not only at nearly every plant in California, but in unique ways will give insight on the scope and various impacts that desalination plants may have.