Company aims to ship fresh water from Alaska to drought-plagued California

An Alaska company is planning to be the first to ship massive amounts of fresh water to drought-plagued California, potentially as much as 10 million gallons a month.

"We are prepared to deliver bulk water now, and we are currently working with customers who hope to be able to take delivery by the end of the year," Alaska Bulk Water CEO Terry Trapp said in an email.

Trapp, who used to run a bottled water company, would perform the feat by shipping the water on a tanker. The water would be taken from the Blue Lake in Sitka, where the company has rights to up to 9 billion gallons of "some of the most pure water on Earth," he said.

California's drought is now in its fourth year, and 97% of the state is experiencing dry conditions, sparking water shortages and huge wildfires. Even though it's been unusually hot and dry this year in Alaska — which is suffering one of its worst wildfire seasons on record — there's plenty of water in Sitka, Trapp said.

"Sitka resides in a temperate rainforest and has not had any problems with drought," he said. "Sitka receives about 100 inches of rainfall per year.

The hang-ups? Finding available, affordable ships and developing the infrastructure to offload the water on the other end.

"Alaska Bulk Water is working with several shipping companies to help provide vessels for transporting water to its customers," Trapp said. "We have met with many of the municipalities and industries in California and many of them would like to have our Alaska water."

Water experts in California are skeptical, not necessarily because of the idea but as a result of the cost.

Ideas like this "are technologically feasible but economically unreasonable," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank in Oakland. He lumps Trapp's idea in with others such as shipping water in pipes from the Great Lakes, large-scale "mining" of groundwater far underneath the Mojave Desert, or towing icebergs from the Arctic.

"There are no shortage of people with ideas about how to ship water around with no economic savvy," he said.

Other somewhat realistic options already deemed extraordinarily expensive, such as the desalination of ocean water, would still be far cheaper than bringing water by ship from Alaska to California, Gleick said.

But Trapp points out that "this is a new industry, not unlike the development of infrastructure in the oil industry in its early days."