Don't Build a Megalopolis in a Desert

California has been a desert for most of its history. The aberration is the climate that has existed the past few hundred years. In terms of policy, there has been zero consideration of water supply.

Yahoo: California regulator rejects desalination plant despite historic drought

California regulators on Thursday rejected a $1.4 billion desalination plant on environmental grounds, dealing a setback to Governor Gavin Newsom, who had supported the project as a partial solution for the state's sustained drought.

The California Coastal Commission voted 11-0 to reject the proposal by Poseidon Water, controlled by the infrastructure arm of Canada's Brookfield Asset Management, to build the plant on a low-lying coastal site at Huntington Beach, near the town of Costa Mesa, about 30 miles (50 km) south of Los Angeles.

The plant was designed to convert Pacific Ocean water into 50 million gallons (189.3 million liters) of drinking water a day.

That is enough for 400,000 people, but the plant would use a process that staff experts at the commission said would devastate marine life and expose the plant to future risk of sea level rise while producing expensive water too costly for low-income consumers.

The state isn't in a sustained drought. It is in a desert. There isn't going to be any low cost solution.

Maybe this plant was a bad idea in this location though. The state is dumb enough to have that high-speed rail boondoggle ongoing, so it's better to assume policy is like an episode of Three Stooges with bad ideas all around. Looking at it from a distance and knowing what I know of the state, Californians don't want a plant on their coast. A large component of environmetalism there (and everywhere to be fair) is NIMBYism. Perhaps they should negotiate with Mexico for a plant there and pipe desalinbated water into the United States.

Putting a climate change label on this post because California's climate is changing, albeit predictably and not because of anything man has done. The water shortage is manmade though, because California didn't plan for it. Instead, they did as they are doing with electric cars, they ramped up demand (via mass migration across the border) while at the same time supply of water was in decline.