The Santa Barbara City Council has unanimously voted to spend $55 million to reactivate the city's desalination plant and turn salty seawater to fresh water amid an historic drought.
The council voted Tuesday to restart the facility, which could provide up to 40 percent of Santa Barbara's water, according to KSBY-TV.
Council members called the desalination plant an insurance policy against future droughts. It could be online by next year.
The firm IDE American will run the facility, which was built during a dry spell in the 1990s and closed a few years later as rains returned to California. The city can back out of the contract and stop plant operations if the drought ends, KSBY reported.
Cachuma and Gibraltar reservoirs, which provide most of Santa Barbara's water, have reached low levels after record-low rainfall during the past year.
California is in the fourth year of a dry spell that has left more than 98 percent of the state in moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. More than 45 percent of the state is under exceptional drought, the Monitor's most severe category.
Earlier this week, California drought regulators proposed a first-of-its kind, $1.5 million fine against a group of farmers they say illegally took water. The fine announced Monday by the State Water Resources Control Board is the first ever levied against an individual or district with senior rights that are more than a century old and have long provided immunity from mandatory conservation.
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The fine follows months of unprecedented cutback orders to communities, businesses and the powerful agriculture industry during the fourth year of the devastating dry spell in California.
