San Diego Coastkeeper


What Coastkeeper Believes

Based on environmental impact, reliability and cost, San Diego should prioritize its water supply strategies as follows:

  1. conservation;
  2. water recycling and reuse; and
  3. desalination using subsurface intakes.

Open-ocean desalination, which is the most environmentally damaging and energy intensive strategy to create local water, should only be pursued as a last resort after other strategies have been fully implemented.

In accordance with the City of San Diego 2005 Water Reuse Study, the City of San Diego should move forward as expeditiously as possible to implement a mix of potable and non-potable uses for recycled water to maximize the beneficial use of recycled water at the lowest per-unit cost.

Desalination projects must be properly sited and designed, and employ the best available technology to minimize any adverse impacts to the environment, including impingement and entrainment associated with open-ocean intake desalination and greenhouse gas emissions.

San Diego should strive to achieve comparable per household/per capita water usage as the best performing cities with similar climates, and should implement all measures needed to achieve this goal.

Information of Desalination

Water Conservation

San Diego Coastkeeper recommendations to San Diego City Council in Addressing Stage Two Drought.