As water sources continue to dry up in Southern California, one company is building the largest desalination plant in the Western world.

Officials in Carlsbad hope to be successfully tapping the Pacific Ocean as a water source through desalination — a process that removes salt from water to make it drinkable — by the end of 2015.

An Israeli-based company is building the Western hemisphere’s largest seawater desalination plant at a cost of $1 billion. The facility will produce 50 million gallons of drinking water daily, and supply water to about 300,000 residents annually. Average water bills would increase by roughly $7 per month to cover the costs.

Environmentalists say desalination can kill marine life. In addition, mountainous coastline topography makes constructing pipelines difficult and pricey.

Desalination facilities have been built in Southern California in the past, but have not been completed. New desalination facilities such as the one in Carlsbad hope to avoid mistakes of the past to bring the region out of one of the worst droughts in several years.

CCTV America’s Yakenda McGahee reports.