Navy to Install Desalination Plant on Island : Drought: San Nicholas will receive what is believed to be the state’s first municipal system. Water shortage prompted the move.

The Navy will install what is believed to be Southern California’s first municipal seawater desalination system to serve 200 residents of San Nicholas Island, which is suffering from a severe water shortage, officials said Tuesday.

The “reverse osmosis unit,” which will convert seawater into drinking water, is expected to be in place at the Navy-controlled island, about 60 miles west of Point Mugu, in three months, according to Ted Kuepper, research engineer with the Naval Civil Engineering Laboratory in Port Hueneme.

The Pacific Missile Test Center in Point Mugu contracted with the laboratory to install the water-purification system once it is delivered from a Marine Corps facility in Albany, Ga.

Once installed, the unit will produce about 600 gallons of water per hour, or 14,000 gallons a day, Kuepper said. The water is to be mixed with the island’s ground-water supply to serve Naval and civilian personnel working on the island.

The Marine Corps is lending the Navy the system for six months, Kuepper said.

The Navy has been involved in researching and developing desalination technology for more than 20 years. But the process is expensive and is not cost-effective for heavily populated areas, Navy engineers said.

Noting that Southern California is now in its fourth year of a drought, Kuepper said municipalities may have no choice but to consider desalination systems.

“If the drought continues and proposed pumping of additional water from Northern California continues to be politically controversial, then desalination will be the only alternative,” Kuepper said. “I don’t know of any other solution. We just have to spend more money than what people are normally used to spending on water.”

The cost of producing desalinated water, about $7 per 1,000 gallons, is expensive compared to retrieving ordinary ground water. For example, the cost of a year’s supply of desalinated water for a family of four--about 146,000 gallons--would cost as much as $1,000, compared to about $150 for normal ground water, said Mark Silbernagel, project engineer on the San Nicholas operation.

The desalination process is expensive because of the energy required to force pure water through a synthetic filter that removes salt and other minerals.

“I think the technology is just going to get more advanced,” making it more affordable to convert seawater, Silbernagel said.

Desalination technology is now used to purify brackish ground water in a number of municipalities in Florida and North Carolina, Silbernagel said. And several Texas cities are phasing in desalination systems, he said.

Silbernagel said his office recently was contacted by Santa Barbara city officials, who asked for the names of companies that design and build seawater conversion plants.