Much like the water situation in the Western states of America, water resources are diminishing rapidly in Australia due to on of the most devastating periods of drought that country has experienced in its recorded history. Their solution: desalination plants. But such measures come with costs:
n one of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects in its history, Australia’s five largest cities are spending $13.2 billion on desalination plants capable of sucking millions of gallons of seawater from the surrounding oceans every day, removing the salt and yielding potable water. In two years, when the last plant is scheduled to be up and running, Australia’s major cities will draw up to 30 percent of their water from the sea.
The country is still recovering from its worst drought ever, a decade-long parching that the government says was deepened by climate change. With water shortages looming, other countries, including the United States and China, are also looking to the sea.
“We consider ourselves the canary in the coal mine for climate change-induced changes to water supply systems,” said Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association of Australia, an umbrella group of the country’s urban water utilities. He described the $13.2 billion as “the cost of adapting to climate change.” […]
Until a few years ago, most of the world’s large-scale desalination plants were in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, though water scarcity is changing that. In the United States, where only one major plant is running, in Tampa Bay, officials are moving forward on proposed facilities in California and Texas, said Tom Pankratz, a director of the International Desalination Association, based in Topsfield, Mass. China, which recently opened its biggest desalination plant, in Tianjin, could eventually overtake Saudi Arabia as the world leader, he said.
Many environmentalists and economists oppose any further expansion of desalination because of its price and contribution to global warming. The power needed to remove the salt from seawater accounts for up to 50 percent of the cost of desalination, and Australia relies on coal, a major emitter of greenhouse gases, to generate most of its electricity.
Critics say desalination will add to the very climate change that is aggravating the country’s water shortage. To make desalination politically palatable, Australia’s plants are using power from newly built wind farms or higher-priced energy classified as clean. For households in cities with the new plants, water bills are expected to double over the next four years, according to the Water Services Association.
How soon before American desalination plants dot the California coastline to provide water for both residential and agricultural uses? I suspect sooner than we ever imagined.
The sooner Southern California goes to getting water from desalinization, the happier the folks in the Inland Empire and in cities along the Colorado River will be. But consider the size of the desalinization project required to supply all of Southern California with the water it now gets from several states.
And if the desalinization projects are even larger, Southern California could become a net exporter of water.
Now think about how much that would cost. What organization, public or private, could spring for the capital cost of such a project? Only the federal government in a repeat of Hoover Dam, TVA, Bonneville infrastructure development.
Republicans, even from California would never vote for that.
If drought comes to Southern California, it sure seems that the Republican politicians’ days are numbered, doesn’t it.
They are already in drought conditions. The right wing meme is that the lack of water for agriculture is all the EPA’s fault.
That is hilarious. EPA’s fault. Maybe the Sierras and the Colorado River need some real wetland restoration efforts from the EPA so that there will be some smidgen of truth to their accusations.
Or maybe its time for the US government to start ending leases of public land, close down Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam, and reduce the size of government impact in the West. They want small government don’t they?
No. or at least not for much of the West.
as you note, desalinization is expensive. There’s only one thing CA farmers hate more than not getting any water, and that’s paying a fair price to get it. And anyway, the San Joaquin valley is too far inland, across difficult mountains. I can imagine the coast dotted with desal plants a lot easier than I can imagine an aqueduct from coast to valley.
Cities will pay what it’s worth – but desalinization will only make sense for a few coastal cities out of reach of stolen Sierra or Colorado River water, such as Santa Barbara and Monterey. LA and San Diego will be able to get water cheaper by buying it from SoCal ag interests.
Santa Barbara has had a desalinization plant since the early 90’s, when it was built in response to a drought.
Their website claims to be “the largest in the US”, but it may be out of date.
No doubt the new CA GOP slogan will be “let them drink Evian”.
IIRC, the plant was finished in early 1993, and was in operation for only a few weeks before being mothballed, largely because the drought that precipitated the plant’s construction ended just as it was coming on-line.
As far as I know, the plant never went back into service. I lived in SB in 1992 & early 1993 when the plant was put on-line for the first time & moved to Atlanta in July 93.