With rising sea levels and diminishing fresh water lakes, we have a serious water crisis. A viable solution is to build thousands of desalinization plants around the world to use for drinking, bathing and agriculture. This will help end the drought epidemic in the United States and in other nations, while counteracting rising sea levels globally.
Lake Mead, the source of water for the Hoover Dam, is at only 36% of full capacity, the water level is decreasing at a faster rate than previously projected, according to Ian James of the Arizona Republic. Historically low water levels in Gatun Lake have slowed traffic on the Panama Canal to a standstill. Lake Ontario has suffered the driest period since 1966, according to the International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board.Both US and European satellites have captured the profound changes in drought-stricken, continually warming California. The last two years have been the driest period in the last 40 years and the paucity of water is visible in the state’s plummeting reservoir levels.
While freshwater levels are falling worldwide, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) reports that by 2100 sea levels will rise at least 1.6 feet and possibly as high as 6.5 feet by the end of the century. “A high scenario that assumes a continued rise in global carbon emissions and an increasing loss of land ice; global average sea level is projected to rise about 2 feet by 2045 and about 6.5 feet by 2100.”
The UCS reports that an intermediate scenario that assumes global carbon emissions rise through the middle of the century then begin to decline, and ice sheets melt at rates in line with historical observations; the global average sea level is projected to rise about one foot by 2035 and about four feet by 2100.
The best scenario assumes that nations successfully limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius (the goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement) and ice loss is limited. Under this scenario, global average sea level is projected to rise about 1.6 feet by 2100.
Thirty miles north of San Diego along the Pacific Coast, sits the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant, the largest effort to turn salt water into fresh water in North America. Each day 100 million gallons of seawater are pushed through semi-permeable membranes to create 50 million gallons of water that is being piped to municipal users. The Carlsbad desalinization plant, which became fully operational in 2015, creates about 10% of the fresh water the 3.1 million people in the region use, at about twice the cost of the other main source of water. It is expensive but crucial because this water source is local and reliable.
“Drought is a recurring condition here in California,” said Jeremy Crutchfield, water resources manager at the San Diego County Water Authority. “We just came out of a five-year drought in 2017. The plant has reduced our reliance on imported supplies, which is challenging at times here in California. So it’s a component for reliability.”
A second plant, similar to Carlsbad, is being built in Huntington Beach, California with the same 50-million-gallon-a-day capability. Currently there are 11 desalination plants in California, and 10 more are proposed.
The Carlsbad desalinization plant cost approximately $1 billion to build.
How many gallons of water will reduce sea levels by one inch? According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,the area of the world’s oceans is about 140 million square miles.
One million gallons equals 0.057 inch per square mile of water. To raise sea level by 0.057 inches it will take 140 million square miles times one million gallons or 140 trillion gallons of water.
The Carlsbad plant produces 50 million gallons of water per day or 1.825 trillion gallons per year. It would take 76 Carlsbad-sized plants to reduce sea level by 0.057 inches in one year. Over 80 years, these 76 plants will lower sea level by 4.5 inches. We will need four times that number of plants, or a total of about 300, to fully counteract a sea-level rise of 1.6 feet. And that is the best-case scenario.
We can have a goal of 250 desalinization plants in the USA, 250 in China, 100 in Russia, 100 in Brazil, 100 in India, 20 in Israel, 200 in Europe, 50 in Australia, 20 in New Zealand, 20 in South Africa, 50 in Saudi Arabia, or a total goal of 1,140 desalinization plants worldwide. If we meet this goal, we will counteract a sea level rise of approximately six feet by the end of the century.
Israel already operates 31 plants that are similar in size to the Carlsbad facility. nnAccording to Scientific American, “Amazingly, Israel has more water than it needs. The turnaround started in 2007, when low-flow toilets and showerheads were installed nationwide and the national water authority built innovative water treatment systems that recapture 86% of the water that goes down the drain and use it for irrigation — vastly more than the second-most-efficient country in the world, Spain, which recycles 19S%.” The Israeli company IDE built the desalinization plant in Carlsbad, California.
In 2015, according to the Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination ((2019) 9 (2): 115–132),China’s per capita water resource quantity was approximately a quarter of the world’s average level, and therefore it has been recognized as one of the 13 lowest water-availability countries throughout the world. The Journal of Water Reuse and Desalination found that China had 139 operational seawater desalination plants.
Spain has 11 seawater plants, South Africa seven, Sweden two, Germany one, France none, Italy none, Saudi Arabia, 9, India, 2, Russia, none, United States, 30.
Israel has led the world so far, because it faced critical water shortages for decades. The United States should lead the world in building desalinization plants and reclaiming wastewater. The significant impact of a massive campaign to build desalinization plants would be to counteract rising sea levels around the world while increasing fresh water for drinking and agriculture.
Joel Joseph is an attorney and chairman of the Made in the USA Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American-made products. Email joeldjoseph@gmail.com. Phone 310 MADE-USA.
From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2021
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