The vision of Australia burning up with some of the worst climate change related wildfires on earth should give you a visceral understanding of how dry that continent has become. Australia has a population significantly smaller than California, most of its population is coastal, and it is still one of most water impaired places on earth. It is only going to get drier and hotter. Cities were running out of water – for agriculture, household and industrial uses and even drinking water. Seriously running out of water. Because of the distribution of people, accessing seawater was the easy button. Very few people live in the interior of the country. So Australia did the obvious.
“Facing the worst drought in 1,0000 years (1997 to 2010), in just eight years, Australian state water utilities built six large seawater desalination plants ranging in size from 35 million to 120 million gallons per day in all mainland state capitals as well as a 60 million-gallon-per day potable water recycling system in Brisbane… The total investment in these water security measures was around $15 billion Australian (about $11 billion U.S.) to provide water security in the face of climate change, increasingly volatile weather patterns and population growth.” San Diego Union-Tribune, November 28, 2015. The above picture is of the Perth desalinization plant.
Since over 70% of the earth is covered by oceans, all that available water, especially for those near a coast, would seem an obvious place to begin the process of converting it to potable and useful water. More than a few catches. First, even with the reverse osmosis processes, desalination plants use a lot of energy. We are already pressed with power generation issues, trying to break the dependence on fossil fuels… and we still do not have anything close to a sufficiently large and viable source of enough alternative energy. But even assuming we are able to accommodate a new and massive demand for energy for this desalinization, there is at least on more catch.
“During the desalination process, half of the collected water will end up as fresh water. The remaining half will be a highly concentrated brine containing a mixture of toxic chemicals. Research shows that desalination plants produce 141.5 million cubic meters of brine each day, compared to 95 million cubic meters of fresh water. Disposal of this brine can be costly and, if tossed back into the ocean, can be deadly to marine life.” ecoMENA.org, July 13, 2019. That brine does not sustain most forms of life. Some have run long French drains that slow release the salty mix back into the ocean over a really long distance. Miles and miles. Some of that brine also contains commercially valuable minerals that can be separated and used accordingly. Much of it simply needs to be removed.
Desalinization is not a magic bullet; it creates as many problems as it solves. With one more nasty side effect: political wrangling for infrastructure contracts that go with building these plants. Steve Lopez, writing for the March 7 Los Angeles Times addresses the games that accompany desalinization projects in California, which has an 1,100 mile coastline:
“[It’s] only natural to think: Hey, let’s just stick a straw in the ocean, and our rabid thirst will be quenched once and for all… But desalination comes with many costs, including big hits to the environment and ratepayer pocketbooks. And as Susan Jordan, executive director of the California Coastal Protection Network, puts it, we need to temper our lust for what seems an easy fix.
“‘Desalination is the last place you want to go,’ said Jordan. ‘Conservation, recycling — those are better alternatives. Rainwater capture. There are many things that should come before desalination, because it has the worst impacts on the atmosphere and on the ocean.’
“And yet the administration of [California Governor Gavin] Newsom, who sells himself as an environmentalist and conservationist, seems hell-bent on promoting the Huntington Beach desalination plant — carrying water, so to speak, for well-connected corporate power player Poseidon Water.
Remember the big flap over Newsom attending that French Laundry birthday party without wearing a mask, while his message to all of us was to mask up and stay home?
The bigger story, laid out with surgical skill by the Pulitzer Prize-winning [LA Times Journalist Bettina] Boxall, was that the birthday boy was a Poseidon Water lobbyist… The adage about following the money serves us well here… As Boxall reported after digging through records, Poseidon has spent $839,000 on lobbying for this project, with $575,000 of that sum going to Axiom Advisors. And who is a principal at that lobbying firm? Jason Kinney, the French Laundry birthday boy and a pal of Newsom.
“Meanwhile, emails reveal that Poseidon has inserted itself into staff review of the project, so much so that it’s fair to ask if state regulators are doing their jobs or rolling over… Five years ago, I went to Huntington Beach to meet with local foes of the project, and they made a compelling case for their opposition. They argued that there was no particular need for desalination at this location, where studies had determined that water supplies were projected to be plentiful for years thanks to aquifer maintenance and conservation practices.
“They also pointed out that no buyer for the desalinated water had been lined up, which is still the case. And they argued that despite mitigation plans by Poseidon, sucking water out of the ocean would have a significant impact on microscopic marine life, and that because desalination plants burn megawatts of electricity, the project would be counterproductive to the state’s carbon control objectives.” Sometimes, money talks. Sometimes, it screams!
OK, but is desalinization still a viable solution to water shortages where access to potable water from other source is simply drying up? Maybe… those issues need serious solutions. There is already too much toxicity in the oceans without dumping so much more. Remember those massive “dead zones” that surround so many coastal cities?
I’m Peter Dekom, and we have a very long way to go in embracing workable solutions to the many negative aspects of climate change.
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