SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Desalination pours more toxic brine into the ocean than previously thought
Technology meant to help solve the world's growing water shortage is producing a salty environmental dilemma.
Desalination facilities, which extract drinkable water from the ocean, discharge around 142 billion liters of extremely salty water called brine back into the environment every day, a study finds. That waste product of the desalination process can kill marine life and detrimentally alter the planet's oceans, researchers report January 14 in Science of the Total Environment.
"On the one hand, we are trying to provide populations — particularly in dry areas — with the needed amount of good quality water. But at the same time, we are also adding an environmental concern to the process," says study coauthor Manzoor Qadir, an environmental scientist at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Hamilton, Canada.
I would take some salt, but it probably contains microplastics.
The state of desalination and brine production: A global outlook (DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.076) (DX)
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:22AM (1 child)
(cont) By the way, the Micro Plastics. I signed, very proudly and very beautifully, the Save Our Seas Act of 2018. Every year, over 8 million tons of garbage is dumped into our beautiful Oceans by many countries of the world. That includes China, that includes Japan, and that includes many, many countries.
This waste, trash, and debris harms not only marine life, but also fishermen, coastal economies along America's vast stretches. The bad news is it floats toward us. I've seen pictures recently, and some of you have seen them, where there's a vast, tremendous, unthinkable amount of garbage floating right into our coast, in particular along the West Coast. I'm talking about Washington, Oregon and California. Very blue, right?
And we're charged with removing it, which is a very unfair situation. It comes from other countries very far away. It takes 6 months and a year to float over, but it gets here, and it's a very unfair situation. It's also unbelievably bad for the Oceans. Otherwise known as Seas.
Every year, over 8 million tons of garbage is dumped into our big beautiful Oceans. And when you think of that number. I mean, to think 8 million tons, and I would say it's probably, I think it's probably more than that, based on what I've seen and based on the kind of work that I've seen being done.
This dumping has happened for years and even for decades. Previous administrations did absolutely NOTHING to take on the foreign countries responsible. We've already notified most of them and we've notified them very strongly.
The Save Our Seas Act will help address this problem by extending the Marine Debris Program for five additional years. We also are strengthening that up to improve waste management overseas and clean up our nation's water. We will boost the federal government's response to ocean waste by authorizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare severe marine debris events, which happen all the time. It's incredible. It's incredible when you look at it. People don't realize it, but all the time we're being inundated by debris from other countries.
This legislation will release funds to states for cleanup and for response efforts. And we will be responding and very strongly.
The legislation also encourages the executive branch to engage with those nations responsible for dumping garbage into our Oceans. My administration is doing exactly that. For example, the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is the first U.S. trade agreement ever to include commitments by the parties to cooperate to address land- and sea-based pollution and improve waste management.
The Save Our Seas Act was a tough one, but it had great bipartisan support. Something you don't see too often, we had a unanimous vote for that one in the Senate. Bipartisan. 100%. Something you'd think we'd see for Border Security. All Americans agree we need much better Border Security.
And I can tell you that Senators Dan Sullivan and Sheldon Whitehouse -- he's called Whitehouse but I don't see him at the White House as much as I'd like -- were very insistent on trying to get that into the USMCA, the new agreement that we have with Canada and Mexico. And we'll be putting it into other agreements also.
Hey, Sheldon is a Dem, I'm not going to hire him. But I have a lot of respect. Actually I might hire him, who knows? We have great jobs opening up here all the time. Probably not. But he's very welcome to visit the White House. Frankly it's been like a ghost town here lately.
The United States has some of the most beautiful beaches and Oceans in the world, and the coastlines are incredible. As President, I will continue to do everything I can to stop other nations from making our oceans into their landfills. That's why I'm pleased -- very pleased, I must say -- to have put my perfect signature on this important legislation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:24AM
http://www.humorpower.com/art-rulethree.html [humorpower.com]