from your linked article...note that CA as a whole is not rejecting desalinization plants....
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"A similar plant 60 miles to the south in Carlsbad, the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, has been churning out drinking water since 2015. Water from the desalination plant, the nation’s largest, is sold to the San Diego County Water Authority under a 30-year contract. The water accounts for about 10% of what’s used by the area’s 3.3 million people, and the Water Authority says the typical monthly cost is about $5 per household.
Santa Barbara also has an operating desalination plant. And in Dana Point, the South Coast Water District is moving forward with plans to build the Doheny Ocean Desalination Project, a smaller plant that would prevent tiny marine life from being sucked in and killed by drawing seawater through slant wells beneath the ocean floor."'
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Other CA communities are stepping up to the water shortage issue with Desalinization projects...I haven't followed the controversy, but when I hear that OC is rejecting the project when nearby San Diego county is already drinking water from its Desal plant, it gives me pause...i.e. OC is staunchly conservative and therefore not a location that has "warmed up" to Gavin Newsom...or the issue of Climate Change...but that is admittedly pure supposition on my part.