Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/107143
COMMENT editoR'SCoRneR Climate no spur to US desalination Institute published its critical report July was apparently the USA's Desalination, With A Grain Of Salt, the same hottest ever month and as D&WR goes SDCWA announced it was withdrawing to press in mid-August, the large red and from the Carlsbad project, leaving brown patches on the NOAA national developer Poseidon Resources to deal with a drought map - indicating extreme and multiplicity of water districts and eventually exceptional drought respectively - seem to be coming to a deal with the Metropolitan increasing. Ideal climate for desalination, you Water District. SDCWA had other issues might say. with MWD and aborted that deal, so the Yet the publication in early August by circle went round with San Diego picking the Pacific Institute of a list of California's up the baton again. proposed desalination plants showed barely Received wisdom about the difficulties any change in desalination capacity forecast of getting desalination up and running in for the state from the last time they looked southern California – where it is surely in 2006 – 50 MGD (189,000 m3/d) in fact, going to be needed soon – seems to blame the size of the Huntington Beach plant. By permitting and the countless institutional an odd coincidence, the San Diego County Water Authority (SDCWA) announced the bodies with their fingers in the regulating same day that it had at last reached a water pie. However, the Carlsbad story shows that price agreement for the still-to-be-built even when it had its permits, the politics of the California water communities would still Carlsbad desalination plant. Avista A5 Advert 2011 27/7/12 16:43 Page 1 not let it through. Back in July 2006, when the Pacific Surely this is the lesson – the fragmented nature of water resource provision in many parts of the USA is not conducive to large desalination projects such as those in Australia, for instance. Also, as Poseidon at Carlsbad and American Water's experiences in Monterey and New Jersey have shown, the community at large does not like private companies promising them new water technology. One of the most successful desalination plants in recent years, the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant in El Paso, was a publicpublic deal between the water utility and the US Army. If my theory holds, the Bay Area Regional Desalination Project (see page 30), planned by five utilities in the San Francisco area as equal partners, will get its go-ahead next year as planned. Let's hope so! Robin Wiseman Solutions for a longer life… ...for your membranes. Our antiscalants, cleaners, biocides and coagulants increase the life of Reverse Osmosis and Ultrafiltration membranes and minimize overall water treatment costs. Contact Avista for help with... Increasing system output Improving cleaning results VITEC ® ROQUEST ® Reducing cleaning frequency Minimizing total water costs ROCIDE ® AVISTACLEAN ® ROCLEAN For product and service details and a list of our global contacts, please visit: www.avistatech.com | 4 | desalination & Water Reuse | August-September 2012