The largest drinking water desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere just got approved. The San Diego County Water Authority agreed to purchase 50M gallons of water each day from Poseidon Resources LLC. The $984M project will serve about 7% of the Authority’s water needs.

San Diego currently brings water from Northern California and the Colorado River via hundreds of miles of aqueducts. They pay about .33 cents per gallon for that water. They agreed to pay twice that amount for the desalinated water.

Why pay more? The Authority believes this plant will provide drought protection and that the cost of  water will increase substantially in the future. Many bond investors must agree, because Poseidon Resources LLC has sold the bonds which will finance the plant.

This type of big thinking helped make America great. It’s good to see folks taking on substantial projects. Let’s hope the construction managers are able to hold to their budgets and the technology works. If you want to know a bit more about the process, check out Desal 101.