As California battled its last severe drought in the early 1990s, Santa Barbara spent $34 million on a desalination plant that proved too costly to keep running when rain returned. Now the city can't afford to keep it idle.
"Show me how we conserve our way out of this if these conditions continue," said Joshua Haggmark, water resources manager for the city, located 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, during a tour of the facility, which he is working to reboot by the end of next year. "If a business doesn't have the water it needs to do whatever it needs to do, they're going to find it somewhere else and they'll leave."
The paradox of California's drought, entering its fourth year with no end in sight and prompting unprecedented calls for conservation, is that the parched land sits astride the world's largest ocean. While purification of nonpotable water has long propelled other arid parts of the globe, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, California has historically favored cheaper and less energy-intensive options such as redirecting water from the north and storing it in reservoirs.