LA Times spotlights OceanWell desalination test off Malibu Play

A front page article today in the Los Angeles Times reports on the company that plans to test a new saltwater desalination technology in deep water off the coast of Malibu later this year.

OceanWell is one of two companies that have appeared in Malibu to, as it were, test the waters.

The LA Times report says the test desalination plant, in a freshwater reservoir in the Santa Monica Mountains near Thousand Oaks, was a success.

OceanWell has a plan to put underwater desalination tubes in a very deep section of the ocean about 4-1/2 miles off the shore of Malibu. Strong water pressure would mean less electricity would be needed to push saltwater through membranes that remove the salt.

Freshwater flows through; the salt washes away in strong ocean currents, not causing any salt concentration or pollution. The power lines out and water lines back would be buried.

OceanWell is talking about a lot of water — about 400,000 gallons of freshwater per day to be piped through Malibu.

The first customer in line is the Las Virgenes water district, which serves customers in the mountains above Malibu and along the 101 freeway.

Nobody has released any plans for how the water would be piped ashore, but the pipeline could theoretically come ashore anywhere.

Las Virgenes could theoretically ship the water to Los Angeles and use water from the state water project in exchange. Water districts exchange water like that all the time.

But it is theoretically possible that Malibu could tap into a pipeline as it comes to shore from the OceanWell project. This would give us a backup to the single pipe that connects Malibu to the state water project via a spigot in Culver City.

The OceanWell system is not cheap — it will cost up to a billion dollars. But the water would be relatively cheap, because the underwater desalination plant would save up to 40% of the energy cost of a normal desalination plant.