Drought: Marin, Saudi crown prince eyeing same desalination plants

Marin County water officials are thinking of buying three desalination plants to bolster local supplies, but they’re facing an unlikely competitor — Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Marin Municipal Water District, which might deplete its reservoirs by next summer if the drought continues, had considered renting two portable desalination plants for nearly $30 million from Osmoflo, an Australian company. Last week, the district staff said a third plant has become available and that purchasing them might be less expensive than renting.

However, bin Salman wants the same plants for his controversial, futuristic megacity of Neom on the Red Sea, according to Paul Sellier, the water district’s operations director. Bin Salman created a company, also named Neom, to build the city, and he is chairman of the board.

“What we’re trying to put together is a means of us securing those Osmoflo units. I don’t know what that looks like,” Sellier said Monday. He said plans to talk with Osmoflo representatives this week.

Bin Salman’s proposed $500 billion city envisions a 10,000-square-mile utopia with lavish amenities such as a “huge artificial moon, glow-in-the-dark beaches, flying drone-powered taxis, robotic butlers to clean the homes of residents and a Jurassic Park-style attraction featuring animatronic lizards,” according to reports from the Guardian last year.

The Al Huwaitat tribe and its 20,000 members face being forcibly displaced by bin Salman’s project, according to reports from various media outlets.

“It’s kind of an interesting angle to this whole story,” Sellier said.

Desalination is still the district’s secondary option to prevent it from running out of water as soon as July. The district has prioritized a proposed 8-mile water pipeline across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge that would pump in water purchased from agricultural producers in the Sacramento Valley.

The pipeline is favored because district staff said it could provide the 10 million to 15 million gallons of water per day needed to meet basic indoor health and safety needs should the county’s reservoirs dry out. By comparison, the three desalination plants would produce about 5.4 million gallons per day.

The three plants would cost about $35 million a year to rent and $6 million a year to operate, district staff said on Friday. Sellier said he will be discussing the potential prices to buy the plants with Osmoflo.

The district is also exploring a fourth desalination plant from a French company, Suez, that would be able to provide an additional 1.5 million gallons of water per day, Sellier said. No price information was available as of Monday.

The proposed pipeline project would require the district’s board to make significant investment decisions in the coming weeks. One is a $20 million decision on Oct. 19 on whether to begin prepurchasing pipe and other construction materials.

The district staff said the decisions must be made in order to have the pipeline and related facilities in place by July. Overall, the project could cost $60 million to $90 million, according to district estimates. The district plans to issue bonds to pay for the project.

“There’s no easy answers here,” board member Larry Bragman said on Friday.

Should the board decide not to pursue the pipeline, Sellier said, the district could shift its attention to securing the desalination plants next month and still have them ready to operate by July.

Osmoflo can ship the plants anywhere in the world within 10 days, Sellier told the district board last week.

“Schedule-wise, they feel comfortable being able to meet our needs,” he said.

As proposed, the desalination plants would be set up on San Rafael Bay. A 1,000-foot outfall pipeline into the bay would need to be constructed. The brine resulting from the treated bay water would be diluted with an equal amount of wastewater from the Central Marin Sanitary District.

The district studied the construction of a permanent desalination plant at the same location in San Rafael in the 2000s. The plant would have been able to produce the equivalent of 60% of the district’s yearly potable water demand. The board shelved the project in 2010 in response to declining water use, which was the main driver behind the study.

The cost to build such a permanent plant now would be around $225 million and would take several years, Sellier said.

Setting up a desalination plant would require various approvals from state and local agencies within nine months. Staff said the district should be able to use its previous environmental studies

“We feel that we can accomplish those by July,” Sellier told the board last week.

Meanwhile, the district is negotiating with two Sacramento Valley water districts to purchase water for the pipeline project. The talks include the potential for 15,000 acre-feet of water from the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District and 10,000 acre-feet from the Yuba Water Agency. Those agreements could come to the board as soon as the end of October or early November, according to Sellier.

The board is also set to consider a $7 million contract to authorize the full design of the pipeline project in early October.

The desalination option has raised concerns, especially about environmental impacts. Desalination uses four times as much power than the district’s potable water treatment system, according to the district’s previous environmental analysis. Concerns have also been raised about the proposal to introduce brine, albeit diluted with wastewater, into San Francisco Bay.

Some attendees at last week’s board meeting urged the district to pursue the pipeline.

“We have to look at the best of the not-great options and it does seem that the pipeline is really still by far the best option here,” said Larry Minikes, a Marin Conservation League board member.

The district is also looking to enact stricter conservation measures to stretch out the remaining supplies in its seven reservoirs in the Mount Tamalpais watershed. The reservoirs make up 75% of the district’s supplies, with the rest coming from Russian River water imports. The reservoirs are about 35% full.

District ratepayers have failed to meet the 40% conservation goal it imposed in late April, having reached peak conservation of 30% in August.

At its meeting at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, the district board will consider an ordinance imposing new fees on higher water users. The board will also hold a discussion on whether to adopt stricter conservation measures. The district is letting residents use spray irrigation one day per week, use drip irrigation twice per week and refill pools.

More information about the meeting can be found at marinwater.org