Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/107143
REGIONS NORTH AMERICA Pacific Institute reports lists California desalination plans The Pacific Institute (PI) has published a list of all the currently proposed seawater desalination plants in California, USA, as a precursor to a new desalination report in 2013. As of July 2012, says the report, Proposed Seawater Desalination Facilities in California, there are 17 seawater desalination plants proposed for development along the California coast. (However, six of these are for Monterey, where only one is likely to see the light of day - Ed). Two additional plants that would provide water to southern California residents are also under consideration in Baja Mexico. The report's authors are PI co-director Heather Cooley, who co-wrote the institute's controversial 2006 report Desalination, With A Grain Of Salt, and research associate Kristina Donnelly. The current publication is solely factual, but publication of a new analysis is promised in 2013. The total combined capacity of the proposed plants ranges from 390 to 570 MGD (1.5-2.2 million m3/d), which is about 50 MGD (189,000 m3/d) more than was proposed in 2006. In a release accompanying the report, PI says that, because more research and analysis were needed, the institute initiated a new research project on seawater desalination in 2011. As part of that effort, PI conducted some 25 one-on-one interviews with industry experts, water agencies, community groups, and regulatory agencies to identify some of the key outstanding issues. Heather Cooley updated Desalination, With A Grain Of Salt in an article in D&WR (August/September 2007), while Nikolay Voutchkov, then associated with the Carlsbad project, wrote a response to the report in D&WR (November/December 2007). One of the projects listed, the BARDP project in San Francisco's Bay Area is featured on page 30. ASIA & PACIFIC Queensland legislates for centralised CSG brine disposal The Queensland state government in Australia is introducing legislation to bring about centralised treatment and disposal of water and brine produced from the coalseam gas (CSG) industry. The minister for natural resources and mines, Andrew Cripps, introduced proposed amendments to the Petroleum and Gas (Production and Safety) Act 2004 in State Parliament on 2 August 2012 relating to CSG water and brine, registration of pipeline easements, and incidental activities across tenure associated with CSG and natural gas projects. Currently, CSG companies store untreated water and brine in containment ponds on each petroleum lease and treat it through infrastructure built on site, which is inefficient and costly, the minister said. "These amendments could result in the beneficial use of salt produced by the CSG industry for products such as soda ash and soda bicarbonate rather than it being dumped in landfill, and will boost potential for beneficial reuse of CSG water for irrigation," Cripps added. Azerbaijan beginning Caspian Sea desalination Azerbaijan has begun a project for desalination of seawater from the Caspian Sea, a government minister said on 4 May 2012. The minister of ecology and natural resources, Novruz Guliyev, told a meeting of the Caspian-European Integration Business Club that the work was being carried out by Gum Adasi NGDU, an enterprise of the state oil company SOCAR. The minister said that the water would initially be used for industry, then later, if needed, for drinking water for the population. | 32 | Desalination & Water Reuse | August-September 2012 NRDC report urges control and reuse of fracking wastewater The US Environmental Protection Agency and individual states should ban or more strictly regulate the discharge of shale gas wastewater to publicly owned treatment works. They should update pollution also control standards for centralised waste treatment facilities that accept shale gas wastewater. These are the two leading recommendations of an issue brief published in May by the non-profit National Resources Defense Council, In Fracking's Wake: New Rules are Needed to Protect Our Health and Environment from Contaminated Wastewater (IB:12-05-A). It also says that reuse of wastewater for additional hydraulic fracturing can offer many benefits (although these benefits can in some cases be offset by energy use and the generation of concentrated residuals). MIDDLE EAST World Bank publishes report on Arab reuse Total water reuse in the Arab world is estimated at 2.17 million m3 per year, according to a report just published by the World Bank summarising the findings of the Expert Consultation Meeting on Wastewater Management in the Arab World, convened in Dubai in May 2011. The publication, Water Reuse in the Arab World: From Principle to Practice, says that Egypt, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the largest users, accounting for 75% of the Arab region in term of total domestic water reuse. Pervasive water scarcity, urbanization and the increasingly obvious impacts of climate change however led to a shift in local perceptions of the importance of properly capturing and using reclaimed water. Today, says the report, water reuse is regarded by most Arab nations to have great potential in significantly increasing available water resources. Arab states currently produce an estimated 10.8 million m3/year of wastewater.