Water Desalination: The Answer to the World's Thirst?

By: Jeff HullWed Jan 14, 2009 at 1:45 PM

Diablo Canyon Nuclear Powerplant Desalination

The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo relies on desalinated water from a small desal plant (at water's edge, center). | Photography courtesy of Pacific Gas & Electric

As supplies of fresh water evaporate, the world turns to the sea.

Related Content

Jordan is referring to a proposed 50-million-gallon-per-day desal facility on Agua Hedionda Lagoon, in Carlsbad, California -- a venture in which GE is a partner and which received some of its early funding from Warburg Pincus. The plant's planners, Poseidon Resources, claim they can make water while emitting no more greenhouse gas than the State Water Project, the antiquated system of canals and pumps that hauls water from the Sacramento -- San Joaquin Delta southward, and which single-handedly drains 2% to 3% of the state's annual energy budget. Poseidon says the Carlsbad plant will become North America's largest desal facility, providing drinking water to 300,000 customers at a daily cost comparable to other municipal sources.

But Marco Gonzalez -- an environmental attorney who's helping to sue the California Coastal Commission in an effort to reverse a conditional permit for the Carlsbad plant -- thinks number crunching does not begin to account for costs inflicted upon the sea. Gonzalez, whose shaved head and tiny techno-geek glasses do nothing to distract from his surf-sculpted good looks, thinks that, given Southern California's culture of "desert denial," desal isn't always a bad idea. But sometimes it is, and what's happening in Carlsbad is one of those times.

Gonzalez says that while many environmentalists tend to focus on brine discharge, which they fear will harm marine life, studies show those impacts can be blunted. There are, with desal megaplants, bigger fish to fry. Energy consumption and its associated carbon stomp are two. A third is referred to as the "impingement and entrainment" of marine life -- eggs and larvae of fish, copepods, mollusks, and other animals that get sucked into the intake and killed. You can, Gonzalez says, avoid that destruction -- by digging intakes beneath the seafloor, or sucking water from beach wells, for instance -- but those methods cost more.

"The expense is significant," Gonzalez admits, but so is the cost of not doing it. "Carlsbad is the first big plant [proposed for California]. It sets the stage for every plant coming down the pike. If policy is established that requires sub-seafloor intakes here, you can bet that's going to be the best available tech for every subsequent plant up and down the coast. So it's all about money -- and shortsightedness."

Gonzalez thinks that before officials spend hundreds of millions of dollars on desal plants, they should look at water reuse. "We are discharging more than 200 million gallons a day of secondary treated sewage out into the ocean. The only difference between that and drinking water is reverse osmosis and disinfection," Gonzalez says. "Why in the heck wouldn't we apply the same technology to water recycling?"

Almost everybody in the desal industry concedes that recycling water is a cheap, easy way to augment supplies. But there's one big obstacle: Try telling people they have to drink filtered toilet water. Scooping peanut M&M's from the bowl on his desk, Gonzalez says, "I can, I will, I do constantly."

When he's not working, Randy Truby likes to ride his motorcycle around the West -- a big man on a big bike, charging across the arid landscape. Whereas others bailed out during the desal industry's swoon in the 1980s and 1990s, Truby throttled up. "Around the year 2000, I became convinced a new surge was coming," Truby says. In the following two years, megaplants in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia; Fujairah, United Arab Emirates; Singapore; and Tampa, Florida, were planned and built. From 2003 to 2007, the RO market expanded at a compounded growth rate of 55% a year.

Today, Truby is chairman of the Affordable Desal Coalition (ADC), an outfit dedicated to proving the cost-effectiveness of state-of-the-art desal facilities. ADC has been running a pilot study, funded partly by grants from the state of California that in 2006 produced water for roughly the same price per gallon San Diego residents pay -- and using 1 kilowatt-hour less energy per 1,000 gallons than the State Water Project. The ADC project produced an average household's daily water demands using about as much energy as a PC.

"The ADC has shown that, cost-wise, RO seawater desalting is a push compared with aqueducts," Truby says. "And you have the benefit of not transporting water from one region to another."

It has taken both the Joneses and the Trubys of the world to bring desal to the verge of economic viability in the United States. "There are so many very large projects being bid right now," says Truby, who has just overseen the purchase of two new buildings and the leasing of a third for manufacturing, warehousing, and office space for his 100 employees. "I don't see how anybody can keep up."

Truby knows as well as anyone that the hydro-illogical cycle remains a force to be reckoned with. He's seen big companies come and go. In the 1960s, Gulf Oil ran television ads promoting desal during rocket launches. DuPont dove into the business, then bailed when profitability figures didn't pencil out. Siemens has waded into water and desal behind GE. But something tells him, this time it's going to be different.

Jeff Hull, based near Missoula, Montana, has written for The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

From Issue 132 | February 2009

Print Newsletters

Browse current issue ›

Subscribe to Fast Company ›

Recent Comments | 22 Total

January 23, 2009 at 8:13pm by Gonzalo Pique

Hundreds of these super-efficient desalination plants are being built around the world. It is Ironic that the membranes and the ERI Energy recovery technology was developed in California, but California will be the last major thirsty market to benefit from modern desalination technology.

Water Desalination: The Answer to the World's Thirst?

Related Content

Recent Comments | 22 Total

Sponsored Links