GE will provide a desalination system that will increase the supply of fresh water for California’s Catalina Island, located 22 miles southwest of Los Angeles.
Southern California Edison (SCE) is expanding its desalination plant on the island, using technology from GE that will convert seawater into clean drinking water.
According to GE, the new system will produce up to an additional 150,000 gallons of water per day by treating the concentrated seawater from the existing reverse osmosis desalination system and turning it into fresh water.
GE is supplying its SeaTech-84 seawater reverse osmosis technology, consisting of a containerized desalination system that will be configured for continuous operation.
Like the rest of California, Catalina is in the middle of a severe drought.
The island’s current water supply comes from local wells, supplemented by the desalination plant at SCE’s Pebbly Beach Generating Station. This facility produces up to 200,000 gallons of water per day, and the expansion will increase its overall future capacity to up to 350,000 gallons of water per day.
The new system will defer, and possibly avoid, a mandatory 50 percent cutback in water usage.
“Our residents and businesses have already made substantial water usage cutbacks to help conserve this precious resource during the drought,” explained Ben Harvey, City Manager for the City of Avalon, Calif. “The new desalination unit will significantly increase our freshwater supply and hopefully stave off additional water usage restrictions.”
