At MIT, researchers are making good progress with their development of a solar-powered desalination system that can drastically increase groundwater in Indian villages.  After two years of “detective work,” Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Amos Winter, MIT PhD candidate, Natasha Wright, and a team of researchers developed a prize-winning, solar-powered, electrodialysis desalination system to address water shortages across India.^[1]

After winning USAID’s Desal Prize in April 2015, Professor Winter reports that the development timeline of the project vastly accelerated.^[2]  The award has connected his group to key figures in the clean water sector; and, USAID has provided insight into the possibility of developing the team’s desalination system in other places around the world, particularly the Middle East. Gaza is one such place that is desperately in need of this technology.^[3]

In Australia—the “world’s driest inhabited continent”—an idle $4.1billion (USD) desalination plant could soon become active.^[4]  The plant is located along Australia’s southeastern coast in Victoria.  Next month, Victoria’s state officials will decide whether to turn on the plant, which will carry water in from the Bass Strait, a sea strait separating Tasmania from the Australian mainland.  An underground tunnel will carry the seawater into a large complex of buildings located in a seaside town near Melbourne, where it will be treated.   The facility can supply one-third of the city’s water needs, the equivalent of 151,400,000 cubic metres of water a year.^[5]

Australia’s desalination industry may vastly expand in the near future. In addition to this potential plant, there may be up to five other major desalination plants across Australia that may be operational by 2030; and government officials and the desalination industry may join forces to build additional plants.^[6]

In San Diego, water excess has led officials to dump 1,893,000 cubic metres of expensive, desalinated water into a reservoir near Chula Vista.  To become potable water, once again, this water has to be retreated at the cost of $250,000.^[7]  The city has only recently opened up the Carlsbad Desalination Plant—the most expensive and largest plant of its kind in the Western hemisphere—and things aren’t going exactly as planned.  For several reasons, including unexpectedly low water demand, San Diego did not need some of Poseidon’s water; but the city remained contractually obligated to pay for the desalinated water.

The San Diego County Water Authority has blamed the water wastage on its main supplier, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California which reportedly refused to diminish its supply of water deliveries to San Diego.  Environmental groups, including the Orange County Coastkeeper, believe that circumstances in San Diego serve as a “cautionary tale” for Orange County, where the Water District has reaffirmed its support of Poseidon Water’s proposed $1 billion (USD) desalination plant in Huntington Beach.^[8]  The water district supports the approval of the plant’s final permit, even though it has just released a new report which indicates that water demand in 2040 will fall 17 percent below previous projections.^[9] 

Meanwhile, the chairman of San Diego’s Water Authority, Mark Weston, has released an op-ed in the Voice of San Diego, arguing for the importance of desalination in providing “long-term water supply reliability to support 3.2 million residents and a $218 billion economy in a semi-arid region with few naturally occurring water resources.”^[10]

Above all, this under-reported issue of water wastage in San Diego raises important questions about the future of desalination in California; and, it raises the possibility that future deals between cities and industry leaders may operate with different terms. 

In El Paso, Texas, there will soon be a new water treatment plan that is the first of its kind in the world.  The treatment plan is simple—and it has potentially important consequences for the water world: a commercial water plant that is situated next to a desalination plant will convert wastewater from desalination (i.e. brine) into fresh drinking water, by extracting and transforming salts and minerals into commercial products (reusable minerals).  Each day, the plant will produce more than 7,571 cubic metres of drinking water, using brackish water reverse osmosis technology.^[11] 

This collaboration is being undertaken by Veolia, the French transnational company that is a titan of water and waste management, and Enviro Water Minerals (EWM), a Texas-based company that is “commercializing technology to recover the minerals discharged in the wastewater of brackish water desalination plants.”^[12]  EWM has awarded Veolia a 10-year operations and maintenance agreement to manage its commercial water plant.  The innovative plant is scheduled to open in early 2017. 

The CEO of EWM, Hubble Hausman, has said that the plant—a “zero-discharge wastewater facility”—“will demonstrate that it is possible to produce multiple marketable chemical and mineral products from the waste brine while increasing the recovery of potable water and eliminating waste.”^[13]