There have been some interesting stories in the past year about pilot projects for new desalination technologies. Here are two in the LA Times that caught my eye.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-03-21/desalination-tech-tested
https://capture6.org/2024/06/24/capture6-featured-in-the-los-angeles-times/
The thing that always strikes me about these articles is that the State of California does not seem to be involved. In these cases, the start-ups are getting some support from forward looking local water agencies, but the State is largely absent when they should be leading. Instead of supporting the technologies of the future, Governor Newsom is spending his second term going all out for concrete mega-projects like it is the 1950s.
The next Governor will be in a position to set a new direction.
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Feeling nostalgic about the blog tonight, so here are snips from old posts making this point when discussing other new technologies that were not being funded by California. From 12 years ago.
California water policy is driven with built in expectations of sea-level rise, changing precipitation and levee-exploding earthquakes. We accept those assumptions, but not assumptions about advancing technology. I am confident that we will have game-changing technological advances concurrent with if not before any of those climate change and natural disaster impacts hit California water in a large way, and I am certain we would if our policies did more to encourage these technological advances...
... after links to new technology developments at LLNL and Lockheed Martin...
If California were to focus more on these types of technological breakthroughs, we would not only be solving our own water problems but helping to solve a critical present and even greater future problem in poor, developing countries. We could develop technologies and advanced manufacturing here, and sell to a global market.
Instead, California water policy is fixated on a pair of $14+ billion concrete tunnels, where an estimated $3 billion of the total will be spent on foreign tunneling machines and plumbing components. It seems so last century and unCalifornia to me.
In 2019, this post about a new federal grant supporting a desalination research hub at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (not funded by California),
It's nice to have the hub of this new federally-funded consortium in California, but there could be much more of this activity in the state. California could totally dominate R&D, new technology development, and commercialization of alternative water technology with a relatively small amount of investment and policies to push local adoption. I strongly believe supporting and adopting new technologies should be the focus of the state's future water vision, including any future water bonds. This would create lots of high-paying jobs, as we develop technologies to solve our own problems that have broad applicability and worldwide commercialization potential.
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