Now THIS makes sense.
The City of Antioch’s plan to build a brackish water desalination plant on the San Joaquin River received a boost from the State Department of Water Resources, which is recommending a grant of $10 million in Proposition 1 Water Bond funds to the city for construction of the project.
“I am pleased to see the hard work we put into passing the Water Bond paying off on a local project that will improve the quality and reliability of fresh water for Antioch residents,” said Assemblymember Jim Frazier, D-Discovery Bay. “This is the type of project we envisioned in the Legislature when we passed the Water Bond legislation and asked voters to approve it.”
“This project creates new fresh water and is a great example of an alternative to the proposed foolhardy Delta tunnels project, which does not create a single drop of new water,” Frazier added. “This plant will use brackish water that is currently not utilized to increase our overall supply of fresh water. This is the type of water project California should be investing in – creating new water with minimal impact on the environment and unambiguous benefit to end users.”
Read the entire article here: State Supports Antioch’s Plan for Desalination Plant.
On the other hand, hating to add a negative side to otherwise positive good news, the reason a plant is even needed is that the State has irresponsibly managed the export pumps and continue to over-export. Their commitment is supposed to be to keep the “X2” line the other side of Pittsburg. (For those of you not from this area, Antioch is on the Delta upstream from Pittsburg. So keeping the salt water at Pittsburg means fresh water for Antioch.)
The “X2” line is identified by its distance from the Golden Gate Bridge where salinity at the river’s bottom is about 2 parts per thousand (ppt) and is the basis for standards to protect aquatic life (seawater salinity is about 35 ppt). For years, during BDCP meetings, we’d hear from representatives from Antioch about the struggles their city was having trying to take their water supply from the Delta. Back in 2009 the X2 line had come in so far that they could only get fresh water during an outgoing tide.
The exporters continued to ignored their plight. I’d prefer that the State do what it should and start reducing exports to the amount they were originally promised. But, failing that or until that happens, I’m glad to see something is being done to get Antioch additional clean drinking water.
Save the California Delta Alliance (STCDA) 
Hi Jan,
I am a very big proponent of desalination however I have a big concern about this and here is my logic.
The City of Antioch has not need desalination in the past, but now they do now, why? Some of it may have to do this less snowpack, but I believe most of it has to do with the fact the X2 line keeps moving and why is that? That’s because more and more water is being pumped south. Now with the construction of a desalination plant for Antioch this will allow more and more water to be pumped South and it will not matter to Anticoh officials that salinity levels increase by their water intakes as they can remove the increased salinity.
So for the supporters of exporting water to the South, $10 million removes one more municipality fighting them. A small amount to pay!
-Dave
(408) 218-9472