Catalina Island to receive desalination technology from GE

When Governor Jerry Brown announced his mandatory water cutbacks, Catalina Island, located off the coast near Long Beach, was told to cut 50 percent of its water usage. To help meet that cutback, Southern California Edison (SCE) is expanding the island’s current desalination plant. SCE will utilize GE’s advanced desalination technology to create fresh drinking water from undrinkable seawater.

The reverse osmosis system will be set up to run continually, which will provide the community with an additional 150,000 gallons of water per day.

“Our residents and businesses have already made substantial water usage cutbacks to help to help conserve this precious resource during the drought,” said Ben Harvey, City Manager, City of Avalon. “The new desalination unit will increase our freshwater supply and hopefully stave off additional water usage restrictions.”

Currently, the tourist destination’s water supply comes from local wells that are supplemented by the desalination plant at the SCE Pebbly Beach Generating Station. The current desalination plant produces 200,000 gallons of water per day. The addition of this new desalination plant, which is expected to go live in September, will increase the water supply to 350,000 gallons per day.

“Even an island in the Pacific Ocean can experience a severe drought. Catalina Island has an immediate and urgent need for additional freshwater. The GE SeaTech-84 seawater RO desalination system is a smart choice for Catalina Island due to its fast delivery and set up so that the island can begin using the additional fresh drinking water during the summer tourist season,” said Yuvbir Singh, general manager, engineered systems, water and process technologies for GE Power and Water.

According to GE, the company manufactures 264 million gallons of fresh drinking water every day through its network of global desalination plants.