San Francisco, CA
Desalination plant proposed for San Francisco Bay
Saying it needs to evaluate all options for new sources of drinking water, Silicon Valley’s largest water district is studying a plan to build the first seawater desalination plant along the shores of San Francisco Bay.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District, a government agency based in San Jose, has approved spending $1.7 million for Black & Veatch, a Walnut Creek firm, to conduct an engineering feasibility study over the next 12 months for a project near the bay’s shoreline in Palo Alto, Mountain View or San Jose.
Under the proposal, which is still in the early stages, the plant would take between 20 million to 80 million gallons of water a day from the bay, run it through filters to strip the salt out and serve from 10 million to 40 million gallons a day of freshwater to South Bay homes and businesses. That would provide about 11,000 to 44,000 acre-feet of water per year, enough for between 100,000 and 500,000 households.
The salty brine left over would be blended with treated wastewater from one of the South Bay’s sewage treatment plants to reduce its salinity and be released back into the bay.
“People ask us about desalination all the time,” said Tony Estremera, a member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District’s board of directors. “Can we really do it? We don’t know. It’s worth looking at. We really do need to do a serious look at it, and this is a substantial look.”
In theory, desalination can provide an endless supply of water. In 2015, crews built a $1 billion desalination plant in Carlsbad, in San Diego County. It provides 54 million gallons per day — nearly 10% of the drinking water for San Diego. It is the largest plant in North America.
But desalination is also the most expensive type of water to produce. The San Diego County Water Authority pays $3,400 an acre-foot for the Carlsbad water — more than double the cost of water it imports from other sources, and up significantly from the $2,200 it paid when the plant opened a decade ago.
By comparison, the Santa Clara Valley Water District pays about $400 an acre-foot to the federal and state government for water it draws from the Delta. However, that water is not as reliable during droughts.
Why is it so expensive? Desalination plants run 24 hours a day, blasting water through membranes at pressures higher than a fire hose, and use huge amounts of energy.
Desalinated water is far more costly than recycling wastewater, repairing leaky underground pipes, expanding groundwater storage, or giving people rebates to voluntarily remove their lawns or buy water-efficient appliances, experts say.
“This would be the first seawater desalination plant built in the Bay Area,” said Heather Cooley, director of research for the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit water research organization in Oakland. “We haven’t seen others because we have cheaper alternatives with fewer environmental impacts.”
The district proposal is likely to face significant environmental opposition because it would be near, or inside, the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
David Lewis, executive director of Save the Bay, an environmental group in Oakland, said that building pipes into a national wildlife refuge to draw millions of gallons of water a day from sensitive wetland areas that are home to endangered species would almost certainly cause a major controversy.
“The public has a deep love for the bay and has made a big investment in protecting these parts of the shoreline,” he said. “The public would not likely welcome new development of this type in that area.”
Several alternatives have been tried in the past.
In 2009, many of the largest water agencies in the Bay Area paid to construct a pilot desalination plant in Bay Point, just west of Pittsburg. It ran for more than a year.
But the group, which included the Santa Clara Valley Water District, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, the Contra Costa Water District and the East Bay Municipal Utility District, dropped the idea in 2012.
“The cost of the water was higher than other sources for us,” said Andrea Pook, a spokeswoman for EBMUD. “And the environmental permitting would have been challenging.”
Similarly, the Marin Municipal Water District proposed building a desalination plant on the bay near San Rafael in 2009 but shelved the plan after Marin voters approved a ballot measure in 2010 saying desalination facilities couldn’t be built without voter approval.
Building such a plant in the South Bay, which is shallow and subject to limited tidal action, would require 14 permits from federal agencies and 8 from state agencies, according to a brief environmental feasibility study that the Santa Clara Valley Water District commissioned last year.
GEI Consultants, an Oakland firm that did the study, evaluated 13 alternatives along the San Jose, Mountain View and Palo Alto shorelines. The most feasible options, it found, were to draw in water from underground pipes in the bay off Palo Alto or Mountain View. The most likely site for a desalination plant, however, is in Alviso, the study concluded, where there is more land than other possible sites near Moffett Field and the Palo Alto Baylands. The brine could be disposed of in deeper waters in the middle of the bay, or in a marsh after being blended with treated wastewater, the study found.
The cost would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars if not more than $1 billion. Specific estimates will be part of the engineering study, Estremera said.
There are 12 ocean desalination plants in California now. Most are small and serve military bases, power plants and other facilities, like the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Apart from the Carlsbad plant, there are plants in Santa Barbara and Catalina Island. Two years ago, the Coastal Commission rejected a large plant at Huntington Beach, citing environmental concerns.
In November 2022, however, the commission approved a permit for a $330 million seawater desalination facility in Marina, in Monterey County. That plant, at the site of a former sand mining factory, will produce 5 million gallons of water a day at a cost of $6,000 an acre-foot for the water-starved Monterey Peninsula.
The commission also approved a plant in Dana Point which will produce 5 million gallons a day. It would be built by the South Coast Water District in Laguna Beach and is expected to open in 2028.
“This study is really a response to the community, and our public officials,” Estremera said. “We want to take a good serious look at this and answer once and for all whether it’s possible here.”
Originally Published:
San Francisco, CA
Year 1 of the Lurie era is done. Here’s how he kept — or whiffed — his biggest promises
On Jan. 8 of last year, San Francisco tried on its new mayor like a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.
So far, it has liked the fit.
For 365 days, Mayor Daniel Lurie has taken swings at solving the city’s ills: scrambling to scrap the fentanyl scourge, working to house the homeless, and shaking his proverbial pompoms with enough vigor to cheerlead downtown back to life.
So is San Francisco all fixed now?
The eye test tells one story. The data tell another. But politics is more than paper gains and policy battles. It’s also a popularity contest — and Lurie has categorically been winning his, riding high on a stratospheric 71% approval rating.
Lurie’s rainbow-filled Instagram posts have gone a long way toward soothing locals’ doom-loop fears, but the political fortress he’s built over the past year could easily crumble.
After all, his predecessors as mayor, London Breed and the late Ed Lee, each enjoyed positive approval ratings (opens in new tab) in their first year in office. But the honeymoons lasted only about that long before voters gradually soured on their performance. Should San Franciscans’ adulation for Lurie similarly ebb, his policies might meet more resistance.
Still, if there’s one pattern with Lurie’s efforts in his freshman year, it’s this: While he hasn’t achieved all of his lofty goals, he has fundamentally changed how the city approaches many of its problems, potentially setting up success for future years.
As we enter Lurie: Year 2, here’s a rundown of where the mayor has delivered on his campaign promises, where he’s been stymied, and why voters may continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least, for now.
Misery on the streets
Headwinds: While Candidate Lurie promised to declare a fentanyl “state of emergency” on his first day in office, he quickly found it wasn’t legal to do so. (Per the city’s administrative codes, an emergency needs to be sudden and unforeseen; the fentanyl epidemic was neither.) Instead, the mayor asked the Board of Supervisors to grant him similar powers that an emergency declaration would have afforded him, and they agreed. But as Lurie touted his efforts to curb drug use on Sixth Street, all those drug dealers just moseyed on down to the Mission. The mayor’s first year in office ended with 588 drug overdose deaths, according to the office of the medical examiner (opens in new tab). That’s an improvement from the 635 in 2024, but it’s still an appalling body count — and December 2025 isn’t even part of the official tally yet.
Silver linings: The mayor employed his newfound powers to speed up approvals of initiatives, notching well-publicized wins, like fast-tracking the 822 Geary stabilization center, where police can place mentally ill folks instead of arresting them. It’s got a 25% better success rate at connecting patients to treatment than previous facilities, according to city data, part of a noted change for the better in the Tenderloin. And while some of the police’s high-profile drug busts didn’t net, you know, actual drug dealers, law-and-order-hungry San Franciscans were just happy to see batons fly.
Shelter-bed shuffle
Headwinds: On the campaign trail, Lurie talked a big game about his nonprofit experience, which he claimed had allowed him to cinch deals to create shelter that seasoned politicians had been too slow to enact. He even promised 1,500 treatment and recovery beds built for homeless folks in just six months. By midyear, he had backed off that promise. The real number of beds Lurie created in 2025 is about 500, and that’s after 12 months — twice the amount of time he gave himself.
Silver linings: Housed San Franciscans gauge success on homelessness with their eyeballs, not bureaucrats’ spreadsheets. By that measure, Lurie is succeeding. As of December, the city counted (opens in new tab) just 162 tents and similar structures, almost half as many as the previous year. (And as a stark counter to what some would call an achievement, for people on the streets, that can mean danger — without a thin layer of nylon to hide in, homeless women say they are experiencing more sexual assaults.) And drug markets haven’t vanished; they just moved to later hours. But are folks really getting help? Rudy Bakta, a man living on San Francisco’s streets, would tell you no, as he’s stuck in systemic limbo seeking a home. He’s just one of thousands.
Reviving the economy
Headwinds: Lurie asked for (opens in new tab) “18 to 24 months” to see downtown booming again, so we shouldn’t ding him for Market Street’s continued slow recovery. Foot traffic downtown has generally risen, reaching 80% of pre-pandemic levels by midyear, but slumped to roughly 70% as of November. While it doesn’t sound like much, that’s a reversal of the rising trend the city controller had projected. Office attendance is also slipping. It had risen past 45% of pre-pandemic occupancy in January 2025 but by the fall had slid below 40%.
Other economic indicators are wobbly too. Hotel occupancy “lost steam” in November, the controller wrote, nearing pre-pandemic levels in the summer but dipping below 2019 levels in the fall. The poster child for downtown’s troubles is undoubtedly the San Francisco Centre, the cavernous, and soon tenantless, shell of its former self. And while public employee unions are undoubtedly happy that promised layoffs were avoided, Lurie’s light hand in his first-ever budget pushed some even harder decisions to 2026’s budget season.
Silver linings: There’s a brighter story to tell outside the Financial District: Neighborhoods are where the action is nowadays. Just ask anyone dining at one of Stonestown Galleria’s 27 restaurants. This is where Lurie’s Instagram account (opens in new tab) truly has generated its own reality, crafting an image of a retail and restaurant renaissance. While that neighborhood vibrancy may lead some to shrug their shoulders concerning downtown’s continuing malaise, it’s worth noting that San Francisco’s coffers depend on taxes generated by the businesses nestled in those skyscrapers. There’s a reason we had a nearly $800 million budget deficit last year.
Fully staffing the SFPD
Headwinds: At first glance, Lurie appears on track to meet his campaign promise to staff up the city’s police force. “I’ve talked with current command staff and former command staff. We can recruit 425 officers in my first three years. We will get that done,” he said at a 2024 League of Women Voters forum. True to his word, the SFPD hired and rehired roughly 144 officers last year. There’s just one problem: The department recalculated the number of officers it needs in order to be fully staffed, raising the number to 691. And the police academy, which already struggled with graduating officers, might be hampered in the aftermath of a cadet’s death, after which top brass reassigned the academy’s leadership.
Silver linings: Crime is trending down, and that’s what voters care about, full stop. The reduction is part of a national trend (opens in new tab), yes, but San Francisco’s rates are experiencing an exceptional drop. Really, Lurie really should be sending Breed a thank-you card. Her March 2024 ballot measure Proposition E (opens in new tab) gave the SFPD carte blanche to unleash a bevy of technological tools to enable arrests, including drones and license plate readers, which have seen noted success. “Soon as you slide past that motherf—er with stolen plates, they’re gonna issue a warning to every SFPD station in that area, if not the entire city … and they start dispatching to that area,” rapper Dreamlife Rizzy said in a recent podcast, as reported by the New York Post (opens in new tab). That is music to any crime-fighting mayor’s ears.
The federal immigration court in downtown San Francisco that started 2025 with 21 judges and will soon be down to just four, thanks to Trump administration mass-firings, will close by January 2027.
News arrived Wednesday that federal officials are planning to shut down the immigration court at 100 Montgomery Street in San Francisco by the end of the year, and transfer all or most immigration court activity to the court in Concord. Mission Local reported the news via a source close to the situation, and KTVU subsequently confirmed the move.
Jeremiah Johnson, one of the SF judges who was fired this past year, serves as vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, and confirmed the news to KTVU.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration court operations, has yet to comment.
As Mission Local reports, a smaller set of courtrooms at the other SF immigration facility and ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome Street will remain open for business.
The Concord immigration court saw five judge fired last year, though two had not yet begun hearing any cases. Seven judges remain at that court, and four remaining judges based at 100 Montgomery are expected to be transferred there by this summer.
Mission Local previously reported that out of 21 judges serving at the courthouse last spring, 13 have been fired in recent months, and four others are scheduled for retirement by the end of this month.
This is happening as the court has a backlog of some 120,000 pending cases.
As Politico reported last month, the Trump administration has fired around 98 immigration judges out of the 700 who had been serving as of early last year.
Olivia Cassin, a fired judge based in New York, said this was by design, and, “It’s about destroying a system where cases are carefully considered by people with knowledge of the subject matter.”
This is all perfectly legal, as Politico explained, because immigration judges serve in administrative courts as at-will employees, under the purview of the Department of Justice — and do not have the same protections as the federal judiciary bench.
A spokesperson for the DOJ has said that the department is “restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” following “four years of the Biden Administration forcing Immigration Courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens.”
Johnson also spoke to Politico suggesting that this recruitment language by the DOJ is disingenuous, and that the real intention is just to cripple the entire court system and prevent most legal immigration cases from being heard.
“During Trump One, when I was appointed, there was a policy that got some pushback called ‘No Dark Courtrooms.’ We were to hear cases every day, use all the [available] space,” Johnson said, speaking to Politico. “Now, there’s vacant courtrooms that are not being utilized. And any attempts by the administration saying they’re replacing judges — the math just doesn’t work if you look at the numbers.”
Two Democrats in the House, Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Zoe Lofgren of California, have recently introduced legislation that would move immigration courts out of the Executive branch, but that seems likely to go nowhere until Democrats regain control in Congress.
SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco supervisors are calling for a hearing by the board into the massive power outage in the city last month.
Calls for a hearing
What we know:
Supervisor Alan Wong and other lawmakers say residents deserve answers about the outage on December 20, which, at its height, affected about a third of the city.
Wong added that the credits offered by Pacific Gas and Electric are insufficient to cover lost food, wages and many other disruptions. The utility has offered customers and businesses impacted by the Dec. 20 blackout $200 and $2,500 respectively.
Wong in a statement said power was gradually restored during the initial outage, but that periodic outages continued for several days and that full restoration was achieved on Dec. 23.
“This was not a minor inconvenience,” said Sup. Wong. “Families lost heat in the middle of winter. Seniors were stranded in their homes. One of my constituents, a 95-year-old man who relies on a ventilator, had to be rushed to the hospital at 2 a.m. People watched their phones die, worried they would lose their only connection to 911.”
Wong’s office had sent the utility a letter after previous outages on Dec. 7 and Dec. 10, regarding the utility’s lack of reliability. The letter called the frequency of the outages unacceptable.
PG&E agreed with Wong’s office’s characterization of service specific to the Sunset District and met with the supervisor.
Despite this development, the root cause of the outage on Dec. 20, that impacted some 130,000 residents citywide, was due to a substation fire near Mission and 8th streets. That fire remains under investigation.
Wong thanked fellow supervisors Bilal Mahmood, Connie Chan, Stephen Sherrill, Danny Sauter, and Myrna Melgar for co-sponsoring his request. The boardmembers have asked board President Rafael Mandelman to refer their request to the appropriate committee.
Wong is separately submitting a letter of inquiry to the SF Public Utilities Commission requesting an analysis of cost and implementation of what it would take for San Francisco to have its own publicly-owned electrical grid.
The other side:
A PG&E spokesperson addressed the board on Tuesday, asking for the hearing to be scheduled after they get results of an independent investigation.
“We have hired an independent investigator company named Exponent to conduct a root-cause investigation. We are pushing for it to be completed as soon as possible with preliminary results by February which we will share with the city,” said Sarah Yoell with PG&E government affairs. “We are proud of our ongoing investments to serve San Francisco.”
Yoell assured the utility would be transparent with whatever they find.
PG&E added that they have met all state requirements and that they have a current Safety Certificate approved by OEIS (Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety).
Loss of inventory
Abdul Alomari, co-owner of Ember Grill in the Tenderloin, said his business lost electricity during the massive outage.
“It’s not just me. Across the street, all these restaurants here, nearby businesses. It hurst a lot of people. I’m just one small voice from so many people here that got hurt,” said Alomari.
He plans to attend the PG&E hearing and said Tenderloin merchants already have a tough time.
“Less people come here, the Tenderloin, Every single bit of help helps. It doesn’t help that every three months we get a power outage for four hours and we lose business,” said Alomari.
He said compensation from PG&E alone is not the answer. He wants reliability and stability.
“That’s only short time if we have things like this happen all the time, eventually it’ll off set what we get,” Alomari said.
The Source: PG&E statement, interviews with the supervisors, interview with a restaurant owner and original reporting by Amber Lee.
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