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Desalination Plant Begins Operation in Tampa
ambisinistral writes "The Tampa Tribune reports that the first commercial desalination plant in the U.S. is set to begin operations today. By March the plant is expected to be operating at full capacity, producing 25 million gallons of fresh water a day (10% of the water currently provided to the area from well fields).
There are ecological concerns about returning highly saline water from the plant back into Tampa Bay. Proponents of desalination claim the natural tide cycle will effectively flush the bay of the saline rich discharge, while opponents of the plant feel the ecology of the bay will be badly damaged. Both sides plan on strict monitoring of the situation."
We in the US take water for granted. It's basically free -- cheaper than all other utilities, our water bill is about $15 a month, tops.
Not only do we take it for granted, we tend to take it at the expense of the environment or others downstream. The Colorado River, for example, is only a trickle of a dried-up stream where it used to dump into the ocean, and many Mexican communities have been lost, all because people keep moving to LA and, well, needing water.
We need to be much more aware of how we use water in this country, and most importantly, start looking for alternative sources whenever local demands start to affect the ecology or overall flow levels of major rivers.
Desalinization is a great step -- but the next big step would be builidng the huge pipelines (or canals, which'd be much cheaper) to bring water from the coasts to interior cities (though, since most of the population, and thus, most of the worst of the water problems, are near the coast, this isn't as bad as it might be). (yes, I'm ignoring cyclical dust-bowl problems or interior water-starved cities like San Antonio).
Of course, if this current effort flops, then it'll be much tougher to get other cities interested in the program.
It'd be, obviously, preferable of they could use some kind of distillation system, rather than permeable membranes, to arrive at "pure" water with disposable solids (that might themselves be mineable for things like table salt or other chemicals). On the other hand, it might be possible to pipe the very salty "leftover" water back into the ocean, but through a wide-ranging diffusion network over several hundred square miles.
At any rate, I really hope this works!
While most vertebrates have mechanisms to rid themselves of excess salt most invertebrates (sessile or otherwise) do NOT have such mechanisms and depend on their environment to maintain a constant salt concentration. (Note: I have been building salt water aquariums for decades). Suffice to say increasing the salt content even slightly will more them likely not effect fish and up, but will at best stress most invertebrates making them susceptible to disease and at worst kill off large numbers of them and most certainly damage any coral. In turn this could damage food supplies, breeding areas etc for other animals not effected by the increase in salt.
There is going to be a water shortage in the future, and I believe that there is a very easy way to deal with it, however it will require a change in thinking, and an investment in infrastructure:
I don't know how many of you drink the tap water in your community, but here in Canada I know of few people that don't. But we also water our lawns with it, bathe in it, wash dishes with it, wash our cars with it, water our plants with it, etc. etc. etc.
Do you see a pattern here? We use drinkable/potable water for a huge number of things that don't require the water to be drinkable. We spend huge amounts of money to treat our water to then pour it onto our lawns and cars? This makes no sense. What we need is a dual system of delivery: the taps in your kitchen provide drinking water, but the faucet in your laundry room or on the exterior of your house provide non-drinking water for general use.
We could then forgo a huge number of costly, time-consuming treatments for water that is simply not meant for consumption. Previously non-viable sources of water suddenly become available for use in the "secondary" system of water.
You surely don't care if the water that is cleaning your clothing is chlorinated and fluorinated, do you?