The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant has been honored with a Global Water Award as the Desalination Plant of the Year for 2016 by Global Water Intelligence. The award was recently announced at the Global Water Summit in Abu Dhabi. It highlighted the plant for its technological and environmental achievement.

The Carlsbad plant is the result of a 30-year Water Purchase Agreement between the plant’s developer and owner, Poseidon Water, and the San Diego County Water Authority for the production of up to 56,000 acre-feet of water per year.

As the largest seawater desalination plant in the nation, it started commercial operations in December 2015 and is providing the San Diego region with a drought-proof water supply during one of the most severe droughts in California’s recorded history. It utilizes reverse osmosis membrane technology to produce approximately 10 percent of the region’s water supply; it is a core supply regardless of weather conditions, and it is blended with water from other sources for regional distribution.

IDE Technologies operates the plant and construction was carried out by Kiewit-Shea Desalination.

“The successful completion of the largest desalination plant in North America followed years of seemingly insurmountable technical, financial and legal hurdles,” according to Global Water Intelligence. “The tenacity shown by the developer team is matched only by the importance of seawater desalination as a key part of the solution to California’s water crisis. A canny combination of state-of-the art energy recovery technology with an external energy offsetting programme makes Carlsbad the first major infrastructure project in the state of California to completely neutralise its carbon footprint.”

Additionally, the project gained praise for Poseidon’s partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to create, restore and enhance 66 acres of vulnerable local wetland as part of the project scope.

“Poseidon is honored to have received this recognition from so many of the industry’s leaders for what we accomplished in Carlsbad,” said Carlos Riva, chief executive officer of Poseidon Water. “The Claude ‘Bud’ Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant is truly a remarkable success as it will provide enough desalinated water to serve up to 400,000 San Diego County residents during this period of record drought.”