Saving our Coast and Climate from Ocean Desalination

LA WATERKEEPER’S LITIGATION HELPING ENSURE A RESILIENT WATER FUTURE FOR LA  

OCTOBER 27, 2022 

With LA Waterkeeper reaching a final resolution with the West Basin Municipal Water District to put the last nail in the coffin of its ill-conceived proposed ocean desalination project, it is important to reflect on how important this lawsuit was in promoting a more resilient and equitable water future for the region.

There is no doubt that LA needs to develop local, drought-proof water supplies. But resilient local water supplies but also be environmentally sustainable and equitable. Ocean desalination is expensive, energy-intensive, and environmentally harmful. This option should only be pursued as a last resort and only if using best practices. Unfortunately, in 2019 the West Basin Municipal Water District approved plans for a new desalination plant in El Segundo that did not meet these standards. 

West Basin’s proposed desalination plant would have cost at least $500 million to build and was estimated to produce approximately 27,000-44,000 tons of carbon annually. At a time when we must do everything feasible to reduce carbon emissions, this approach to enhancing local water supplies was unacceptable to LA Waterkeeper. The plant would also have had a significant impact on our coastal environment by sucking in marine life (‘entrainment’) or trapping larger wildlife against intake screens (‘impingement’). Meanwhile, the desalination plant would have dumped millions of gallons of brine and other toxins into already-sensitive marine habitats. Paying for the new plant would have required an increase water rates, including for those in low-income communities that comprise a large portion of West Basin’s customers. What made this even more egregious is that West Basin also represents some of the wealthiest, most water-wasting communities in LA County – from Palos Verdes to Malibu – meaning the agency’s poorer customers would essentially have been subsidizing wealthier communities’ failure to conserve water in the face of historic drought.

Together with our Smarter Water LA coalition partners, LA Waterkeeper has advocated for a “4-R” Integrated Approach to Water Management: Reduce (water waste), Reuse (captured urban and stormwater runoff), Recycle (purified wastewater) and Restore (contaminated groundwater) approach to enhancing local water supplies.  

Despite years of pushback from environmental partners that had formed the Smarter Water LA Coalition, local communities and even a number of the agency’s municipal customers, West Basin approved its plans to build the plant. In response, LA Waterkeeper sued West Basin under the California Environmental Quality Act. The lawsuit contended that more thorough environmental analysis was needed to identify alternatives with lower financial, ecological, and social costs; we also argued that climate and environmental justice impacts of such a facility were inadequately analyzed.  

With our litigation pending, in December 2021 West Basin finally bowed to our lawsuit and community pressure and reversed its plans by a 3-2 vote to abandon the project in favor of more sustainable alternatives. The agency spent more than two decades and tens of millions of dollars pursuing this project; it is impossible to overstate how monumental their reversal was – and how significant this victory was in our efforts to achieve sustainable local water supplies. 

With other large-scale desalination projects proposed along the coast, we hope this legal and advocacy victory – as well as a similarly successful effort to stop the massive proposed project in Huntington Beach - will provide a blueprint for halting ocean desalination unless it is absolutely needed. With this project now in the rearview mirror, LA Waterkeeper looks forward to working with West Basin on more sustainable alternatives, particularly expanding recycling wastewater, for which the agency has been a long-time industry leader.   

This success is also a great example of how litigation – particularly when part of a more robust campaign strategy - can be a critical driver in achieving policy victories outside the court. For more examples of how LA Waterkeper’s litigation has directly and indirectly helped create and promote healthier waterways and more resilient communities, check out our Litigation = Impact Report, prepared in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking federal Clean Water Act.