Saltwater toilets, desperate wildlife: Water-starved Catalina Island battles against drought

Island-dweller Lori Snell grimaced as she tallied her bill recently at the Avalon Laundry — nearly $50 for three large loads.

“It’s always an adventure to live in Catalina,” said Snell, 64. “It’s a joy, it’s a paradise, it’s a challenge.”

For Snell and Santa Catalina Island’s other 4,000 full-time residents, water is a bit of an obsession. When you live an hourlong ferry ride from Long Beach, California, a gallon of the stuff can cost six times more than it does “over town” — the islanders’ term for the mainland.

That preoccupation with water has now become critical as severe drought grips California and its Channel Islands — a rugged, eight-isle archipelago that hosts several human outposts and a handful of species that exist nowhere else on Earth.

But although some of the island’s wildlife is struggling for survival, conditions for humans are a little different today than in droughts past, due largely to a desalination plant that opened in Avalon in 2016. The plant today provides about 40% of Avalon’s drinking water.

“Over town, you’re not affected by drought as much as you are here,” said Snell, a former resident of Encino. “All the locals and businesses are