A small desalination demonstration plant, funded by the West Basin Municipal Water District, is being built at the Los Angeles Conservation Corps' SEA Lab in Redondo Beach.

The plant will be testing ways of extracting water from the ocean in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective manner to convert it into drinking water with osmosis, a method commonly used for purifying bottled water.

The project, which is set to open late fall, is part of an initiative to reduce the amount of imported water in the South Bay from 66 percent to 33 percent by 2020.

"We will do this for two years, testing the wedge-wire screen, testing sub-ocean floor withdrawal, testing energy recovery, and if it all works out the way we want it to, we'll create a full-scale plant," said Ron Wildermuth, public and government affairs manager of the West Basin.

For now, the plant is simply a testing and learning facility where beach-goers can witness seawater being turned into drinking water.

"The reverse osmosis technology is what all the bottled water companies use, so people will realize that they're paying more for bottled water when their drinking water can go through the same process and cost 10 times less," said Alexis Tate, chief public information officer at the water district.

"We're going to have a video feed so visitors can see the wedge-wire intake pipe. We call it a wedge-cam," Wildermuth said, smiling. "I love it."

After the water is desalinized, the fresh water will be put back into the ocean with the brine, or concentrated salty leftovers.

"When you take saltwater and make fresh water, the salt from the original water becomes more salty," Wildermuth said. "We've done studies, and we think we know the right level of salt that we can send back to the ocean and not hurt the plants or animals."

The project does come with environmental concerns.

"[Environmentalists] are all watching," Wildermuth said. "They weren't opposed to our demo plant because they wanted to see what would happen. The water industry doesn't have the best environmental record. Owen's Valley and Hetch Hetchy are good examples of how it's gone wrong, so why should they trust us? They want to make sure we do it right, and there's nothing wrong with that."

One concern is that the brine could harm ocean life once it's released back into the water.

"We take more ocean water than needed for the process, dilute what goes back to the ocean and put it in a pipe with holes on the sides, so the water diffuses rather than a concentrated dump in one area," Wildermuth said. "We're confident about this being safe."

Another concern is that the plant won't be "green" enough, and that it will cost a lot of money.

"We use low-energy membranes--reverse osmosis membranes--and that's state of the art for water purification," Wildermuth said. "It's what Australia is using because of their drought. We'll use high-efficiency pumps, and eventually, renewable energy. We're diversifying our water portfolio, and for the same cost."

The operation at the desalination demonstration plant needs to be observed carefully, said Joe Geever, Southern California coordinator of the SurfRider Foundation.

"We have concerns about energy consumption," Geever said. "We understand the plant is addressing our concerns about the mortality issues by testing methods of intake, but we're waiting to see tests before we take a position."

Geever and other environmentalists would argue that there are opportunities to expand recycling before jumping to desalination.

"We definitely support the recycling and conservation, but we've crunched the numbers and if we expanded wastewater recycling all over Southern California, there would be less energy demand and it would eliminate the discharge to the ocean," Geever said.

"We are simply remaining at non-position until we see the results," he said.

The desalination plant is part of the Water Reliability 2020 program, which aims to reduce Southern California's dependency on imported water through doubling recycling and conservation efforts, expanding education and utilizing desalination plants.

"We've exhausted the resources that we have," Tate said. "We can only conserve so much more, and we can only recycle for as many customers we get to come onboard with recycled water. We need another supply."