California and Water · Episode 8 of 8 · 27 min
Why California Can't Build Its Way Out of Its Water Crisis
Desalination, new dams, and engineering the shortage away each carry a loser. The finale weighs why desalinated seawater costs five to ten times as much as imported water, why Carlsbad runs while Huntington Beach's plant was rejected, inland data centers that can drink like small towns, sea level pushing salt into aquifers, and the 2017 Oroville spillway crisis that evacuated 188,000 people.
Who's who
- Daniel SwainClimate scientist who named and quantified 'precipitation whiplash'
Where it happens
- Carlsbad Desalination Plant, CaliforniaOpened December 2015; largest seawater desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere
- Huntington Beach, CaliforniaSite of a desalination plant rejected in 2022
- Oroville Dam, Feather River, CaliforniaTallest dam in the U.S.; 2017 spillway crisis
- Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, California+3 more episodesWhere a saltier ocean threatens the pumps
Timeline
- December 14, 2015Carlsbad Desalination Plant opens.
- February 7-12, 2017Oroville spillway fractures and about 188,000 people are evacuated.
- May 12, 2022Coastal Commission unanimously rejects the Huntington Beach plant.
- Winter-spring 2023Atmospheric rivers end the drought and Tulare Lake reappears.
- May 2026Report highlights how little California knows about data-center water use.
Still debated
Observers disagree whether desalination is boutique insurance for coastal cities or a scalable pillar. Some see data-center water demand as a statewide threat while others see basin-specific impacts that cannot be judged without disclosure.