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GUEST COLUMN | SEPTEMBER 22, 2022




DESALINATING SEAWATER SOUNDS EASY, BUT THERE ARE CHEAPER AND MORE SUSTAINABLE
WAYS TO MEET PEOPLE'S WATER NEEDS

By Gregory Pierce, University of California, Los Angeles

Coastal urban centers around the world are urgently looking for new, sustainable
water sources as their local supplies become less reliable. In the U.S., the
issue is especially pressing in California, which is coping with a
record-setting, multidecadal drought.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently released a US$8 billion plan for coping
with a shrinking water supply. Along with water conservation, storage, and
recycling, it includes desalination of more seawater.

Ocean desalination, which turns salt water into fresh, clean water, has an
intuitive appeal as a water supply strategy for coastal cities. The raw supply
of salt water is virtually unlimited and reliable.

Ocean desalination is already a major water source in Israel and the United Arab
Emirates. Cities in the Middle East, Australia, Mediterranean Europe, the U.S.
Southwest and Australia also rely on it. There are more than 20 ocean
desalination plants operating in California, plus a few in Florida. Many more
plants across the U.S. remove salt from brackish (salty) water sources such as
groundwater inland, especially in Texas.

Nearly 97% of the water on Earth’s surface is in the oceans — but turning
seawater into fresh water is costly and energy-intensive, and it can harm marine
life.

Nonetheless, current evidence shows that even in coastal cities, ocean
desalination may not be the best or even among the best options to address water
shortfalls. Here are the main issues that communities evaluating this option
should consider.

King Aquatic Life

Scalable technologies for removing salt from water have improved steadily over
the past few decades. This is especially true for treating brackish groundwater,
which is less salty than seawater.

But desalination still can have major environmental impacts. Fish can be killed
when they are trapped against screens that protect desalination plants’ intake
valves, and small organisms such as bacteria and plankton can be sucked into the
plants and killed when they pass through the treatment system. In May 2022, the
California Coastal Commission unanimously rejected a proposed $1.4 billion ocean
desalination plant in Huntington Beach, partly because of its potential effect
on sea life.

Desalination plants discharge brine and wastewater, which can also kill nearby
aquatic life if the process is not done properly. And generating the large
quantity of energy that the plants consume has its own environmental impacts
until it can be done carbon-free, which is still years off in most cases.




Unaffordable Water From Costly Plants

Cost is another major hurdle. In most areas, the cost of ocean desalination is
projected to remain considerably higher than the cost of feasible alternatives
such as conservation for the next several decades — the timeline that utilities
use when planning new investments. My colleagues and I found this in our
research comparing water supply alternatives for Huntington Beach, even though
we made favorable assumptions about ocean desalination costs.

Cost breakthroughs on major, market-ready technology in the near to medium term
are unlikely. And desalination costs may increase in response to rising energy
prices, which represent up to half the cost of removing salt from water.

Moreover, capital cost projections for desalination plants often greatly
understate these facilities’ true cost. For example, the final cost ($1 billion)
to build the ocean desalination plant in Carlsbad, California, which opened in
late 2015, was four times higher than the original projection.

Our center has also explored whether piping in desalinated ocean water is a
viable option for small, typically rural areas with public water systems or
private wells that have run dry or are close to giving out. In diverse parts of
California where this has happened, such as Porterville in the Central Valley
and Montecito along the coast, the state is paying over $1 per gallon to truck
in small supplies of bottled and vended water. That’s much higher than even the
most expensive desalinated seawater.

As of Sept. 13, 2022, much of the U.S. West was in drought and projected to
remain dry through at least the end of the year. U.S. Drought Monitor

In these cases, we have found that the relative economics and even the
environmental impact may pencil out, but the politics and management of new
pipelines do not. This is because water supply is typically governed locally,
and many local areas beyond those benefiting would need to agree to a new
pipeline from the coast.

More broadly, we find that proponents of these projects do not proactively
pursue strategies that would make water access more equitable, such as designing
utility rate structures that shield low-income households from higher costs,
providing financial aid to small communities or consolidating water systems.

Better Options: Conservation, Reuse, Storage, And Trading

In most places, several other supply options can and should be pursued in tandem
before ocean desalination. All of these steps will provide more water at a lower
cost.

The first and relatively cheapest way to address water shortages is by using
less. Finding ways to get people to use less water could reduce existing demand
by 30%-50% in many urban areas that have already begun conservation efforts.

Second, recycling or reusing treated wastewater is often less expensive than
desalination. Technology and regulations in this area are advancing, and this is
already making large investments in recycling possible in many arid regions.

Third, storage capacity for enhanced capture of stormwater — even in areas where
it rains infrequently — can be doubled or quadrupled in regions like Los Angeles
and parts of Australia, at one-third to one-half of the cost per unit of
desalinated water.

Even cleaning up polluted local groundwater supplies and purchasing water from
nearby agricultural users, although these are costly and politically difficult
strategies, may be prudent to consider before ocean desalination.

The feasibility of desalination as a local supply option will hopefully change
by midcentury as water scarcity problems mount because of climate change. For
the medium term, however, ocean desalination is still likely to play a small
role if it figures at all in holistic water strategies for coastal urban areas.

Gregory Pierce, Co-Director, Luskin Center for Innovation, University of
California, Los Angeles

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons
license. Read the original article.






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