CARLSBAD - California has a giant reservoir to its west that could supply the parched state. It is called the Pacific Ocean. To tap this salty resource, desalination plants and related technology are being introduced or revived in the state. Part of Gov. Brown's executive order last week to manage water included streamlining the permitting process for water infrastructure projects such as desalination facilities. The $1 billion Carlsbad desalination plant, south of Los Angeles, is scheduled to open in 2016. Santa Barbara has a mothballed desalinization plant from the 1990s that was built after California's previous severe drought from 1986 to 1991. The City Council is now considering whether to bring it back into operation. Towns in Monterey County, including Carmel, are also exploring desalination plants. The problem with desalination is that it's energy-intensive and expensive. The holy grail of desalination is to draw on renewable power to remove salt from ocean water. That's where all natural fresh water comes from — solar energy evaporates the water, which rises into the atmosphere, leaving the salt in the ocean and then falling as pure rain. So far, no one's found an efficient way to mimic Mother Nature, but engineers are trying. A competition that gets underway Monday in Alamogordo, N.M., at the edge of the White Sands desert is one attempt to find that particular grail. Five teams of engineers will deploy machines they've built to run on renewable energy to provide clean water as part of USAID Global Development Lab's Securing Water for Food initiative. They are vying to win the Desal Prize, by producing cost-efficient, durable and easy-to-maintain water purification units.