FORT BRAGG, CA., 9/30/26 — Fort Bragg Vice Mayor Marcia Rafanan told the City Council on Monday night that she went out to the city’s wave-powered desalination buoy, which makes fresh water from ocean water, to taste it.
“I got to go on the taste test out in the middle of the ocean to go taste fresh ocean water with staff and our city manager,” Rafanan said during council members’ reports. The water “tastes just like well water … because it was out of a hose, but it tasted fresh,” she reported. “Hopefully we can incorporate that if we ever need it.”
The city’s 12-month pilot with Oneka Technologies, a company based in Sherbrooke, Quebec, was designed with pipelines carrying fresh water from the buoy to the city’s wastewater treatment plant, according to the Coastal Commission, which approved the project with conditions in December 2025. The pipeline part of the project has since been dropped.
“The pipeline to shore ended up being significantly more costly than anticipated,” City Manager Isaac Whippy wrote in an email Wednesday. The pipe had to withstand the ocean and be removable when the pilot ended, he wrote, and “those requirements added considerably to the cost.”
In an April memo to the Coastal Commission, which the commission provided Wednesday, Oneka said the cost of installing, surveying and removing the pipeline was “disproportionate to the benefits” for a short pilot project. The changes were needed so the project “remains viable under the funding provided by DWR,” the memo said, referring to the state’s Department of Water Resources.
When the project changed
The change took effect in July as an immaterial amendment, a minor change that becomes final without a commission vote if no one objects in writing. No one did, Coastal Commission spokesperson Joshua Smith wrote.
Under the amendment, all the fresh water the buoy makes goes back into the ocean, about 15 feet from where the leftover brine is released, according to Oneka’s memo. Water production and lab results must be reported to the commission monthly. The first report is expected in October, the spokesperson wrote.
Asked whether the state Department of Water Resources, which is paying for the pilot, approved the change in writing, Public Works Director John Smith wrote Monday, “All regulatory agencies accepted the change to withdraw the pipeline.” He didn’t provide a document.
The state grant is capped at $1.49 million, according to the funding agreement. That agreement set a project completion date of March 1, 2025. Asked for the current completion date, Smith wrote, “This is unknown, it will depend on the weather this October.”
The amendment calls for the buoy to come out by Nov. 30, go back in on or after April 1, 2027, and be removed for good by Nov. 30, 2027. Oneka’s memo cited the risks of winter work at sea and said “access is limited based on recent conversations with the Coast Guard.”
The city’s purchase agreement with Oneka, signed in June 2024, defines the 12-month operating period as the time the buoy is “producing and delivering desalinated water” to the city, and it commits the city to accept up to 401,500 gallons a month. The last 20% of the buoy’s $745,000 installed cost comes due on installation, startup and “initial delivery of water to City.” When the pilot ends, Oneka buys the buoy back from the city for $1.
“Water isn’t currently being delivered to shore,” Whippy wrote. He wrote that the pilot is still going ahead to gather data on how the technology works off the coast, and that the city will use what it learns “to explore future funding opportunities with Oneka for additional buoys and the infrastructure needed to bring that water into the City’s supply.”
Smith wrote that “there have been no recent amendments” to that agreement. In an email Sept. 25, he wrote that the city “will be completing the 12-month pilot” and will “need to work around the weather this winter.”
The buoy went in the water Sept. 1. “The buoy will have to come all the way out of the water before the winter swells hit,” the Noyo Harbor District wrote in a Sept. 14 email. It will sit on a lot Oneka has rented from the district since March.
The Department of Water Resources hasn’t yet answered questions sent Saturday about the pipeline change, how much of the grant it has paid out and the new completion date. Oneka hasn’t responded to questions sent Sept. 13, Saturday and Tuesday, including when the buoy will come out this fall.