One of the great ironies of the California drought crisis – or at least one that's repeatedly mentioned – is that the thirsty state borders the theoretically-endless water reserves of the Pacific Ocean. But, of course, closer examination reveals that a) desalination is no simple task and b) the saltwater, in fact, poses one of the great challenges to our water reserves, constantly threatening to leach into aging infrastructure. The Hold the Salt Honorable Mention submission takes the tenuous relationship between salty and fresh water as the starting point for an expansive proposal involving large-scale infrastructural rehabilitation and conversion. 

Hold the Salt, by Erik Jensen and Richard Crockett  

California’s water system depends upon a fragile balance of inbound saline water against outbound fresh water from the state’s watersheds. This tenuous and shifting watermark of salt intrusion is continually maintained with aggressively engineered systems controls. This year California was forced to dam the delta to block incoming salinity in a last ditch effort to stem the tide - a true warning sign of imminent collapse. Tidal sloughs, floodplains, and islands are crossed by pipelines and canals to deliver drinking water to urban California. Fracture-prone and marvelous, any failure in this complex system would quickly result in severe water shortage across the entire state, reaching to Los Angeles.

With efficient proximity to shipping routes, the Delta established itself as a leader in petroleum and chemical refinement in the 20th century. Spills, leaks, and fires continually impact marginalized populations forced to live in proximity to these areas. Firmly embedded within the fabric of the Bay Area conurbation, this string of infrastructures demands remediation before the cost benefit of such interventions grows prohibitive and the predicted sea level rise and storm floods reclaim a polluted hazard with grave ecological consequence.

We propose a test for a regional rhizomatic assemblage of infrastructural reappropriation. Our demonstration site is a linear facility, 5 miles long, that could link Martinez to its waterfront but instead is severed by dated and dangerous infrastructure. It is a site defined by the intersection of two vast infrastructural armatures for oil and water production that are threatened by rising tides.

Passive solar desalination will help localize water production to the East Bay. Massive oil storage tanks are lined and retrofitted to produce fresh water on an industrial scale. The dispositional potential of this infrastructural architecture moves us to a future where public water is resilient and localized. The formal potential of this architecture espouses the beauty of the new order by embracing the scars of the past. The contaminated soils on site are surrounded by wetland ecology for both inundation defense and as part of a larger remediation strategy. Algae farming allows us to create biopetroleum from saline or fresh water: endless linear corridors of pipes become an ethereal network of photoreactive green algae that harken potentials to the public while exploiting the industrial scale on site.

All systems proposed have built precedent and can be readily constructed. It is in their hybridization on site that they speak together to the core shared realities of 21st century infrastructural agency in the face of climate change--this is a hybrid landscape of the coming epoch.

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From the judges:

"Important areas of investigation. However, would like to see more work on scalability." – Peter and Hadley Arnold, co-founders of the Arid Lands Institute

Check out the image gallery for Hold the Salt's complete presentation.

Click here to see the other winners in both the Pragmatic and Speculative categories!