Friday, April 15, 2011
Good morning,
We have mentioned water conservation in Living Green over
and over again because fresh water is one of our most
precious resources. But when you think about it, more than
three quarters of the Earth is covered in water!
Why not just desalinate as much sea water as you could ever
possible use? The answer is, aside from the financial cost
of desalination, it's a very energy intensive process.
The typical American uses around 100 gallons of fresh water
a day. Current desalination methods consume around 14 kilo-
watt hours of energy to crank out 1,000 gallons of water.
If half of this water came from desalination, the United
States would need more than 100 extra electric power plants,
each with a gigawatt of capacity.
But even despite this huge cost, desalinization is becoming
a more and more popular option in thirsty communities.
Scroll down for a story about the largest desalination plant
ever to be built.
Thanks for reading,
Your Living Green editor
Email the Editor
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San Diego County hopes to get 20 percent of its tap water
from the ocean by 2020, which would make it the world leader
in desalination, officials said. The county water authority
is contemplating construction of a desalination plant at
Camp Pendleton, Calif., that could produce 150 million
gallons a day. Poseidon Resources plans a plant in Carlsbad
that could produce 50 million gallons daily by 2012. The
largest such plant now in existence or under construction
is in Algeria. That plant, scheduled for completion in 2011,
would produce 132 million gallons daily.
San Diego County is also involved in discussions with the
International Boundary and Water Commission on building a
plant in Mexico 15 miles south of the border. The county
currently gets 90 percent of its water from the Colorado
River and from Northern California. San Diego cannot expect
supplies from either to increase. "The fact that there's no
large groundwater basin limits our opportunities," said Ken
Weinberg, the authority's director of water resources. "We
have very limited sources -- you have recycling, you have
conservation and you've got the ocean."