Water scarcity
was, until recently, considered by most of the developed world to be like James
Hilton’s Lost Horizon: “far away, at the very limit of distance.”
However, the convergence of aquifer depletion from increasing agricultural,
industrial and municipal water use with more frequent and intense extreme
weather events creates an urgency to
develop new, reliable sources of fresh water to “drought-proof” communities through a combination of desalinization
technologies, water recovery and reuse
programs and PPP (public private partnerships). The race is on to
provide fresh water to satisfy ever-increasing human demands. In order to make
responsible decisions, changing conditions require rethinking water policy and
distribution.
ADVERTISEMENT
In 2012, desalinization
plants numbered about 16,000 worldwide with reverse osmosis (RO) membrane
technology representing over 60% of the plants; thermal technologies accounted for
about 27%. When operational, California’s Carlsbad Desalinization Project (the
largest project in the Americas) will have a 54 million gallon capacity at a
cost of US$ 922 million — US$ 1 billion according to the 2014 Davos
report. Heralded as a direct solution to
potable water access by vulnerable populations, this and similar projects face
significant challenges including high energy usage, hyper-saline brine waste
disposal, costs of facilities’ production and maintenance, water transport to
the most vulnerable people, and marine ecosystem alternation.
Energy
required to power the plants is primarily fossil fuel, adding to the energy
burden and increasing CO2 eq emissions. While the World Economic Forum reported
in 2013 that emerging technologies offer the potential for reducing
energy consumption by
50% or more, those technologies are not currently available.
Construction and maintenance costs grow with required pipeline and
infrastructure improvement. Carlsbad has addressed costs with a unique PPP that
divides the responsibilities for ownership, financing and operational
arrangements between the private company that owns the operation, San Diego
County Water authority that is responsible for infrastructure modifications to
link to existing water systems, and the state financing authority agency for
both public and private bonds. Can other national and global communities
emulate the Carlsbad model?
In the absence of creative financing mechanisms, concern
about the ability of economically distressed communities and developing
countries to maintain desalinization projects after initial development funding
is exhausted is coupled with concerns about transporting water to vulnerable
populations in areas with aging or non-existent infrastructures. Significant increases in droughts and floods alter
seasonal patterns of water availability and affect water quality and aquatic
ecosystem health, with implications for
social and economic wellbeing that are exacerbated in regions of high poverty
and political instability. Moreover, these highly stressed locales are most
often located in regions experiencing the most extreme effects from extreme
weather events.
Read more at Seatrust
Institute.
Dripping
water image via Shutterstock.
