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After a decade of struggles to assuage environmentalists, raise almost $1 billion and win permits, Poseidon Resources Group will finally answer a critical question: Is converting seawater to drinking water a profitable venture in the U.S. when there are cheaper options? The developer of water infrastructure projects began site work last month on the Carlsbad desalination plant, the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. When completed in 2016, the facility 33 miles (53 kilometers) north of San Diego each day will create 54 million gallons of drinking water after drawing it from the salty Pacific Ocean. 

Private Equity Purifies Pacific to Boost California Water
After a decade of struggles to assuage environmentalists, raise almost $1 billion and win permits, Poseidon Resources Group will finally answer a critical question: Is converting seawater to drinking water a profitable venture in the U.S. when there are cheaper options? The developer of water infrastructure projects began site work last month on the Carlsbad desalination plant, the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. When completed in 2016, the facility 33 miles (53 kilometers) north of San Diego each day will create 54 million gallons of drinking water after drawing it from the salty Pacific Ocean. Bankrolled by a $922 million JPMorgan Chase & Co.-led public-private bond offering -- the biggest U.S. project financing deal of 2012 -- Carlsbad’s chances of success are aided by a 30-year agreement with San Diego’s water authority to buy water from the plant. If successful, the project may become a model for how to ease a growing water crunch.

Read the full article at ​bloomberg.com.

 Project financing has closed on a Southern California desalination plant to construct the largest U.S. facility to make drinking water from the sea, capable of producing about 50 million gallons of potable water a day. Financing closed last week for the almost $1 billion Poseidon desalination and pipeline project in Carlsbad, California, that includes $734 million in tax-exempt bonds as well as private equity from Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, meaning grading and initial construction may begin this month, the San Diego County Water Authority said in a statement. “Closing the financing on an approximately $1 billion project is no small feat,” said Thomas Wornham, chairman of the water authority’s board. “This is a major milestone in the development of this historic project.” 

SAN DIEGO — San Diego's regional water agency approved a contract Thursday to buy the entire output of what would be the Western Hemisphere's largest seawater desalination plant. The San Diego County Water Authority voted on the 30-year contract involving Poseidon Resources LLC, which needed the deal to finance construction of the $984 million project. 

The world cradle of desalination know-how wants to start using it​
IF CALIFORNIA were not already so famous for Silicon Valley and Hollywood, it might be renowned for the cluster of water-technology firms in its San Diego County. The reverse-osmosis (RO) spiral module, the trick that underpins turning sea- and waste-water into potable stuff, was patented in San Diego in 1964. Today dozens of firms in the area supply many of the world's roughly 13,000 RO plants in places from the Persian Gulf and Israel to Australia, China, Singapore and Spain.