Oahu has never made drinking water from the ocean. The Honolulu Board of Water Supply is about to, and on Oct. 19, 2026, the U.S. EPA announced a $109 million WIFIA loan for the design and construction of the Kalaeloa Seawater Desalination Facility in Campbell Industrial Park.
The plant is a seawater reverse osmosis facility sized for 1.7 million gallons a day, with room to run up to about 2.55 MGD. It will supply the fast-growing Ewa district west of Pearl Harbor, along with Kapolei Business Park and the Deep Draft Harbor, and cut the amount of groundwater the utility has to move out of Central Oahu.
Project Scope
The utility hired Kalaeloa Desalco LLC in June 2023 to design, build, operate and maintain the plant. Desalco is owned by Consolidated Water and its subsidiary PERC Water Corp., which will run the facility for 20 years after commissioning, with two optional five-year extensions. Consolidated Water guarantees the contract.
The design-build portion is priced at about $149.6 million, and the full contract is worth roughly $204 million over its base term. Nordic PCL Construction, Pacific Advanced Civil Engineering and Bowers + Kubota Consulting are on the Desalco team.
Source water comes from seawater wells rather than an open-ocean intake. The scope also covers brine disposal facilities, a recycled water pipeline and transmission mains on a 20-acre BWS-owned site. Pilot testing was approved in May 2025, and in July 2026 the utility issued a limited notice to proceed releasing about $6 million for long-lead equipment.
Why It Matters
Congress authorized this project in 2005. The final EIS was filed in 2008. It’s taken nearly two decades to get to a federal loan and an equipment release, which says plenty about how slowly drought-proof supply moves in the U.S., even on an island with a hard ceiling on aquifer yield.
Ewa’s population is projected to grow by about 50,000 people between 2020 and 2040, and the BWS expects island-wide demand to climb from about 24 MGD in 2019 to nearly 27 MGD by 2030. At 1.7 MGD, Kalaeloa won’t close that gap alone. The real test is the schedule. Permitting has already pushed the construction notice to proceed, and reports conflict on whether full construction starts in late 2026 or slips to 2027.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | Kalaeloa Desalco LLC (Consolidated Water / PERC Water Corp.) |
|---|
| Owner / Client | Honolulu Board of Water Supply |
|---|
| Consultants | Pacific Advanced Civil Engineering; Bowers + Kubota Consulting |
|---|
| General Contractor | Kalaeloa Desalco LLC (DBOM contractor); team includes Nordic PCL Construction |
|---|
| Status | Planned |
|---|
| Delivery Method | Design-Build |
|---|
| Funding Source | Mixed |
|---|
