California awards $5 million in desalination project grants

By TOM JOYCE

THE CENTER SQUARE CONTRIBUTOR

(The Center Square)California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration awarded $5 million Proposition 1 desalination grants on Wednesday.

The grants will go to projects in Mendocino, Fresno, and Los Angeles counties. Additionally, six projects will get funding via a partnership with the National Alliance for Water Innovation; the partnership aims to advance desalination implementation and research.

Desalination removes salts and minerals from seawater and brackish water to produce water safe for drinking, irrigation and other uses.

California wants to expand brackish groundwater desalination production by 28,000 acre-feet per year by 2030, according to a press release from the governor’s office.

“California is taking action to adapt to the extremes in weather we’re seeing across the state, reshaping our water systems to meet these new challenges and better protect our communities,” Gov. Newsom said in the release. “Our all-of-the-above approach includes capturing and storing more water and innovative solutions like desalination to boost supplies and prepare for a hotter, drier future.”

These are the three projects that will receive grant funding, according to the release: Water Replenishment District of Southern California Construction Project: In Los Angeles County, a project in the City of Torrance will construct a conveyance pipeline to connect an existing well to the existing Goldsworthy Desalter system and install a self-cleaning auto-strainer. The project will reduce the community’s reliance on imported water, provide a sustainable local potable water supply, and increase desalinated water production by 1,120-acre feet per year, or approximately enough water for 2,200 households.

Westlands Water District Design Pilot Project: In Fresno County, the project will desalinate brackish groundwater from the westside upper aquifer and use salt-tolerant plants to remove salts from the brine. The project will provide cost-effective, reliable, and high-quality water to the district and the communities of Coalinga, Huron, and Avenal.

City of Fort Bragg Design Pilot Project: Near the City of Fort Bragg, the project will install an innovative, wavepowered seawater desalination iceberg buoy to provide potable water to residents. The project will diversify the city’s water supply portfolio, create a locally controlled, sustainable, and carbon-free potable water supply, produce water without grid electricity, and strengthen water resiliency during future droughts.

So far, DWR has awarded more than $82 million in Proposition 1 desalination grants to support 20 projects.

Three projects are under construction in Antioch, Camarillo, and Santa Monica. Additionally, three projects have been completed in Torrance, Santa Barbara, and the City of Avalon on Catalina Island. The completed projects produce 8,787 acre-feet of potable water annually, serving about 18,000 households.

DWR is also working with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI) to back six projects that will, “pilot breakthrough technologies to reduce energy demand and costs for desalination projects,” according to the release.

‘Enormous’: Dems reintroduce Green New Deal

Critics

By CASEY HARPER THE CENTER SQUARE

(The Center Square) – A group of liberal Democrats reintroduced the Green New Deal Thursday, the controversial environmental legislation that experts say would spike energy costs in the U.S. and cost taxpayers tens of trillions of dollars.

Advocates, though, argue the changes are needed to prevent worsening climate change and get ahead of an inevitable renewable energy transition.

“For so long, our movement towards a sustainable future has been divided with really just this false notion that we have to choose between our planet and our economy,” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said at a news conference Thursday.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has largely become the face of the legislation, which she called “enormous legislation, huge in scope” and emphasizing the 20 million union jobs and investments in mass transit and electrical vehicle infrastructure such as charging ports.

“We refuse to allow, for example, an economy that goes from oil barons to solar barons,” she said. “That’s what we are not going to do because what we are going to do is we are going to transition to a 100% carbon free economy that is more unionized, more just, more dignified, and guarantees more health care and housing than we ever have before.”

“That’s the goal of the Green New Deal,” she to added.

As Rep. Ocasio-Cortez noted, the Green New Deal is sweeping legislation that would invest trillions in a green economy. Cost estimates vary widely on the legislation, which has changed since its initial unveiling years ago.

The right-leaning American Action Forum estimated after its release that the legislation could cost between $51 trillion and $93 trillion over 10 years.

Critics have raised an array of concerns, saying the bill is too expensive, pointing to national security concerns, and arguing the renewable energy technology is not yet reliable or advanced enough to replace fossil fuels.

They also point to energy costs, which have soared since President Joe Biden took office.

“Last year Democrats hid most of their green agenda inside the so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ which will add trillions to federal debt,” Daniel Turner, executive director of the energy workers advocacy group, Power the Future, told The Center Square.

“They know there’s no appetite for this radical green plan and it is why they never introduced it when they had control of both chambers.

“While Americans pay $1.70 more per gallon of gas since Biden took office and deal with high food prices and empty shelves, we get this kind of DC political gamesmanship, and the American people are sick of it,” he added.

Critics also point to concerns over how federal spending on the green energy transition has fared so far. House Republicans this week were quick to point to a newly released analysis of the Inflation Reduction Act from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which found that more than 90% of green energy tax subsidies went to huge corporations with more than $1 billion in sales.

Republicans also pointed out the Inflation Reduction Act favors “woke” companies with ESG investments and also expressed concerns about reliance on China, which owns the market on the production of green energy technology.

“Many of the same companies getting a green corporate welfare check have shed their American identity to do business with the Chinese Communist Party, and as a result our tax dollars are being funneled to Chinese entities that manipulate our key supply chains,” House Ways and Means Chair Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., said.