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posted by takyon on Sunday April 12 2015, @07:57PM   Printer-friendly
from the salty-savior dept.

Justin Gillis writes in the NYT that as drought strikes California, residents "can't help but notice the substantial reservoir of untapped water lapping at their shores — 187 quintillion gallons of it, more or less, shimmering invitingly in the sun."

Once dismissed as too expensive and harmful to the environment, desalination is getting a second look. [...] A $1 billion desalination plant to supply booming San Diego County is under construction and due to open as early as November, providing a major test of whether California cities will be able to resort to the ocean to solve their water woes. [...] "It was not an easy decision to build this plant," says Mark Weston, chairman of the agency that supplies water to towns in San Diego County. "But it is turning out to be a spectacular choice. What we thought was on the expensive side 10 years ago is now affordable."

Carlsbad's product will sell for around $2,000 per acre-foot (the amount used by two five-person U.S. households per year), which is 80 percent more than what the county pays for treated water from outside the area. Water bills already average about $75 a month and the new plant will drive them up by $5 or so to secure a new supply equal to about 7 or 8 percent of the county's water consumption.

Critics say the plant will use a huge amount of electricity, increasing the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming, which further strains water supplies. And local environmental groups, which have fought the plant, fear a substantial impact on sea life. "There is just a lot more that can be done on both the conservation side and the water-recycling side before you get to [desalination]," says Rick Wilson, coastal management coordinator with the environmental group Surfrider Foundation. "We feel, in a lot of cases, that we haven't really explored all of those options."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 13 2015, @06:15AM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday April 13 2015, @06:15AM (#169560) Journal

    They've been trying to get water consumers to accept that for some time.

    No they haven't.

    No where in North America is sewer outfall considered safe to drink. Even after tertiary treatment. Good enough to water lawns, wash cars, flush toilets, but not for drinking or cooking.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Hartree on Monday April 13 2015, @08:43AM

    by Hartree (195) on Monday April 13 2015, @08:43AM (#169586)

    It requires more than just tertiary treatment but it is already being used here in the US.

    Here's just one organization that's brought it up: https://www.watereuse.org/foundation/research/DPR-Initiative [watereuse.org]

    One of the members of WateReuse Research Foundation is American Water which (among many other places) supplies the water for much of East Central Illinois where I live (My town is independent of them, but where I work, the University of Illinois and Urbana Illinois are supplied by them.)

    Here's another article where both Big Spring, Texas and Wichita Falls, Texas are already doing it: http://www.wateronline.com/doc/texas-leads-the-way-with-first-direct-potable-reuse-facilities-in-u-s-0001 [wateronline.com]

    There was a whole bunch of PR done about it a couple years ago on NPR and other media outlets.

    Yes, they use it as input to their existing potable water treatment plant as 50/50 mix with raw water and it never goes back into the aquifer.

    The comment previous to me mentioned sewer plant output being drinkable directly, and I think that's what you conflated with mine. But even with further treatment, there is considerable public push back on DPR.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @09:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @09:46AM (#169615)

    Given that the majority of water use is for watering lawns, washing cars, flushing the toilet and similar activities, and only a minor part actually goes into drinking, that's fine. You also might use that water for agriculture, another big consumer of water where no one would mind using treated sewage water — after all, for organic food you put animal excrements on the fields!

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Monday April 13 2015, @06:11PM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 13 2015, @06:11PM (#169892) Journal

    The Black Diamond water company got around that by bottling the water and selling it as "water from the Black Diamond" in a different location. (I think Black Diamond was a coal mine, but I never checked.) But it *was* recycled sewage. Possibly the ran it through the coal mine after treating it, but I don't know that they even did that. (I only saw a short article about it once in, I think, the 1980's. You might check out http://www.ci.blackdiamond.wa.us/homepage.html [blackdiamond.wa.us] if you're interested enough.

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