Key Focus Areas

Developing a diverse water portfolio is the strategy Governor Newsom is seeking through his Water Resilience Portfolio Initiative to address California’s water supply challenges, including droughts, floods, rising temperatures, declining fish populations, and aging infrastructure.  Desalination is an important component of the State’s proposed portfolio.

Despite California’s excellent water management, continuing to reliably meet the state’s growing demand for water is an ever-increasing challenge without the addition of new local water supplies like desalination. While California’s population growth rate has declined in recent years, the state’s population is still projected to increase by about 10% in the next decade, driving the need for new, local water sources, including seawater and brackish groundwater desalination.

California’s primary water supply from Northern California faces challenges including variable rain and snow, earthquakes, climate change, and reduced exports due to environmental protections in the California Delta. Development of new local supplies reduces reliance on imported water to meet future growth and supports a more diversified portfolio, strengthening water supply reliability for residents across the state.  

There is no one-size-fits-all approach for desalination. Consideration of a project is based on factors such as location, resources and the needs of a community. Consumers can be assured that desalination is a proven and safe technology that can provide increased water reliability.

As important as conservation is and will continue to be, it is not a singular solution to California’s water supply reliability challenges and does not provide any water supply safeguards for California families, businesses, the environment, and farmlands in the event of a drought, earthquake or other natural disaster. This makes it more important than ever that communities develop new local and reliable water resources, like seawater and brackish water desalination.