The New Yorker: “The waves of the Pacific seem to taunt the thirsty landscape of California. The state has eight hundred and forty miles of coastline adjoining the world’s largest ocean—an oversupply of brine at a time when drought has left fallow more than half a million acres of farmland, claimed some twenty thousand jobs, and cost the economy billions of dollars. To Mark Lambert, though, the state’s water-rich coast is the overwhelming answer to its problems…Lambert heads up the North American division of IDE Technologies, an Israeli company that designs and operates mega-scale desalination plants worldwide. IDE’s Carlsbad facility will be the largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere…U.S., environmental groups generally don’t like desalination, citing concerns about utilities and customers not conserving if they perceive there being an endless supply of clean water from the ocean. Furthermore, according to Sara Aminzadeh, the executive director of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, “It’s just not a good option from a cost and energy standpoint.” She went on, “Desalination may seem like a panacea, but it’s the worst deal out there.”