EMWD Director Ron Sullivan Recognized for Desalination Leadership

From Eastern Municipal Water District: Eastern Municipal Water District (EMWD) Board Member Ron Sullivan was recently recognized by the Multi-State Salinity Coalition with the “Salt of the Earth” award for his ongoing leadership in water desalination.

Sullivan represents the Menifee and Perris areas, where EMWD owns and operates two groundwater desalination facilities that help export more than 25,000 tons of salt annually from EMWD’s service area.
Sullivan has been a longtime advocate for EMWD’s desalination program, which helps meet approximately five percent of EMWD’s water supply portfolio each year. EMWD is in the design stages of a third desalination facility that will further increase capacity.

The Perris, Menifee, Lakeview and Nuevo areas have a groundwater basin that has high salt content and is therefore unusable. In 2002, EMWD launched its desalination program to make use of the water supply and to protect adjacent basins from salt intrusion.

Over nearly two decades, the program has expanded to include the two desalination facilities, 14 wells and additional pipelines to produce clean drinking water. The salt is then exported through a regional brine line managed by the Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority, of which Sullivan is a Board Member.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers recently completed two new groundwater desalination wells and a third is under construction for EMWD. The wells – funded in large part by an Environmental Infrastructure appropriation through the Water Resources Development Act – will be granted to EMWD.

In addition, Sullivan has been a long time advocate for research and development to advance innovative salt management technologies in partnership with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

“I would first like to express my appreciation to the Salinity Coalition for this honor,” Sullivan said. “Groundwater desalination has become an important piece of the water supply in EMWD’s service area, and my colleagues on the Board and our staff have innovated to expand that program to meet the needs of our customers.”

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