News
LTE: Saltworks water
Published in the Palo Alto Daily News
Dear Editor: The proposed use of desalination to solve the problem of providing water to the Saltworks development (The Daily News, Feb. 4) poses even more concerns. A 2003 Redwood City government white paper (www.redwoodcity.org/publicworks/pdf/Desalination_White_Paper.pdf) enumerates significant disadvantages of building a desalination plant in Redwood City, chief among them high operating costs that will remain long after the developer leaves town with huge profits.
Desalination is the most energy-intensive and expensive way of procuring water -- a desalination project in Marin has been delayed by environmental concerns and suffers from a lack of enthusiastic buyers for its much more expensive water. It is also a mistake to assume the desalinated water would only supply the Saltworks development. Who among us would willingly trade our pure Hetch Hetchy drinking water for Bay water?
John Cieslewicz,
Redwood City
