Caleb Zimmerschied Valadez is a freelance writer. He can be reached at calzimval@gmail.com.

The 2020-23 drought drove home how vulnerable water systems in small communities like Fort Bragg have become in recent years. The city didn’t just ask residents to avoid washing their cars or watering their lawns. The community was on the verge of full-scale water calamity.

 ”[The city] had to ship water in on trucks and giant vessels,” recalls Council Member Tess Albin-Smith. “We started warning folks, especially those outside the city limits on city water, that we might have to cut them off and to be prepared to find places to buy water. But luckily the rains came just in the nick of time.”

Today, Fort Bragg’s water future looks much brighter, thanks in part to a new wave-powered desalination buoy — the first project of its kind on the West Coast — and other less glamorous, but effective conservation and storage projects.

Oneka Technologies discovered Fort Bragg in 2022 at the Blue Economy Symposium and Learning Festival, a four-day event hosted by the city and California Sea Grant that focused on sustainable fisheries, commercial and conservation aquaculture opportunities, education, job training, and the infrastructure needs of Fort Bragg and neighboring Noyo Harbor District. Soon after, Oneka approached the city about a possible partnership.

The Canadian company specializes in building modular buoys that use reverse osmosis to turn seawater into freshwater. The pair worked together with the California Department of Water Resources to secure a $1.4 million grant and set up a pilot program for summer 2026.

“This is one of the most interesting projects we’ve ever done,” says Albin-Smith. “We are only the third location in the world that Oneka has chosen to demonstrate this wave-action desalination buoy, the others being in Chile and Florida.”

The buoys don’t use any electricity or chemicals and produce zero greenhouse gas emissions. Oneka expected the Fort Bragg buoy to produce between 5,500 and 18,500 gallons of freshwater a day, depending on the size of the ocean waves. So far, the buoy has produced 20% more fresh water on average than initially projected.

The city needs 57 buoys to meet demand. But even a network of 20 could help ease the strain on the city’s water system.

For comparison, Fort Bragg used a mobile, diesel-powered desalination system as an emergency stopgap measure during the drought. It can pump and treat 144,000 gallons of brackish water per day from the Noyo River when high tides mix too much salt into the freshwater river.

The mobile unit doesn’t have enough hydraulic pressure to treat raw ocean water. A permanent desalination facility could produce far more water a day than a single buoy. But it would also create several tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions each year and cost millions to build and operate. 

The pilot program seeks to understand the environmental impacts of the buoys and how to make the project permanent and scalable. As the buoy removes salt from the ocean water, that excess brine returns to the ocean. Brine can be toxic to marine life, and if improperly discharged, may accumulate on the sea floor.

So far, the produced freshwater’s salinity is coming well below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum amount and doesn’t cross the California Ocean Plan’s limits. The company’s projection models suggest that the nearby water should quickly return to an acceptable level of salinity.

“The approach is really simple,” says Isaac Whippy, Fort Bragg city manager. “It’s to monitor, test carefully, and make decisions based on that evidence.”

One additional challenge is that the fresh water produced by the buoy must travel three and a half miles uphill to reach the water treatment plant. The current estimate for getting the piping in place is $40 million.

But the city isn’t putting all its buoys in one bay. The city is evaluating other ways of increasing the town’s freshwater supplies. These projects could include additional water storage, improved stormwater capture infrastructure, a new water treatment plant, a recycled water project, and a new, traditional desalination unit.

Fort Bragg also switched to smart water meters and changed its water billing to encourage people to use less water. Buildings that come in under their gallon-per-minute rate pay less per gallon.

“When you tell people, ‘Please conserve water,’ there’s no financial incentive for them,” says Albin-Smith. “So, now we’ve restructured rates to reward with a lower rate for less water consumed. The idea is not to punish, but to have an incentive to conserve.” 

The city is currently focused on water storage, going from one small reservoir to constructing three new ones. That could give the city an additional three to six months of water in another drought. The reservoirs are about 60% complete. Construction will continue after the results of an environmental impact report and once the city finalizes additional funding.

“We cannot afford to be reactive when it comes to water,” says Whippy. “We’ve rallied elected officials, our city organization, and our congress folk. The innovative piece of that has really been contagious. … 15 years ago, we were just sticking to upgrading our infrastructure and water treatment plants, but we’re now looking for alternative sources.”