Breaking New Ground in California’s Seawater Desalination: The Sand City Story

This presentation describes a city’s goal of implementing a desalination project supplied by beach wells to facilitate city-wide redevelopment. Significant measures were taken to reduce both capital and operating costs through energy recovery, high efficiency pumps, and off-peak operation. By utilizing this design approach, and making use of a 50% Proposition 50 grant, the treatment facility is expected to produce water at a cost of less than $3 per 1,000 gallons. Significant cost savings were realized through four primary approaches; feed water pumping, RO skid arrangement, Chemical systems and Off-peak operation.