The Rosarito seawater desalination plant is not an isolated project — it sits within a wave of water infrastructure investments worth billions of USD spreading across the U.S.-Mexico border region, from Baja California to Sonora and Arizona. This is notable news not only for its impact on the San Diego region's water supply, but because it opens up a specific job market for Vietnamese-origin engineers working in infrastructure, environment, and water treatment in California and Arizona.
According to voiceofsandiego.org, the Rosarito project could begin construction starting August 1 after Mexico's National Water Commission rejected all bidding submissions in the previous two rounds for failing to meet legal, technical, or financial requirements. Three consortiums — including Spanish company Acciona Agua Mexico and a joint venture with a subsidiary of an Israeli conglomerate operating the Carlsbad plant — are competing in the third round of bidding, with prices ranging from 306 to $433 million. The North American Development Bank has committed to lending Mexico up to $114 million to strengthen pipelines and pumping stations serving this project.
Each project of this scale requires hundreds of engineering positions — precisely the field many Vietnamese-origin engineers are working in.
Why this matters for Vietnamese-origin engineers
Rosarito stands alone no longer. In Arizona, the governing board of the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority (WIFA) has recently approved funding for at least two, possibly three seawater desalination projects in California or Mexico, with a target water supply date as early as 2028. One proposal, led by the ACCIONA-Fengate alliance, aims for a production capacity of 150,000 acre-feet of water annually in Baja California by 2034. Another proposal, separate and considerably larger, led by Israeli company IDE Technologies, aims to build a seawater desalination plant at Puerto Peñasco along with a 200-mile pipeline delivering water to a reservoir west of Phoenix — a plan valued at $5.5 billion that IDE says could supply water to as many as 3 million households.
Each project of this scale requires hundreds of positions for civil engineers, environmental engineers, reverse osmosis plant operators, and transborder infrastructure project management specialists — precisely the field in which a significant portion of Vietnamese-origin engineers in Orange County, San Diego, and the Bay Area have been and are working for water infrastructure consulting firms. IDE, the company operating the Carlsbad plant right next to San Diego, says it has built and operated 450 desalination plants in more than 40 countries — meaning this company regularly recruits experienced engineers directly in California for new projects in Mexico and Arizona.
Environmental lessons from operating models
Not every seawater desalination project runs smoothly on financial or environmental grounds. In Los Cabos, a luxury resort with a golf course has leveraged a reverse osmosis plant combined with solar energy to supply drinking water to the entire residential community and irrigate the golf course with recycled water — a closed-loop model often cited as proof of feasibility. But in Arizona, a Sierra Club branch representative has warned that seawater desalination consumes significant energy and produces substantial quantities of concentrated brine, while a state legislator estimates water costs could reach as high as 3,000 USD per acre-foot — considerably higher than conventional water sources.
What to watch
Vietnamese-origin engineers and consulting firms interested in this field should monitor three milestones: the results of the third bidding round at Rosarito, the WIFA board's decision on the IDE proposal at Puerto Peñasco, and progress on disbursing loans from the North American Development Bank. These are the moments when subcontracts, from pipeline design to construction oversight, will be put out to bid — and they represent real, not indirect, opportunities for those working in water engineering in California and Arizona.