In southeastern Australia, state government officials have ordered 50 million cubic metres of water from the Wonthaggi Desalination Plant.^[1]  The order will add roughly $12 AUD ($8.98 USD) to customer bills over the course of the year—amounting to a yearly total of $27 million AUD ($20,206,800 USD)—in addition to the $608 million AUD ($455,118,400 USD) cost of plant maintenance.^[2]  Steady drops in Victoria’s water storages triggered the order, with Melbourne’s dams dipping just below the 65 percent benchmark that is identified as the tipping point.  The region’s water storage levels fare much better than they did in June 2009, when they dipped to a low of 25.6 percent. 

In San Quintín, a coastal town on the west coast of the Mexican state of Baja California, an ocean desalination plant is under construction.^[3]  This is the state’s second plant, and the first to be approved under the state’s new public-private partnership law.  Two Mexican partners, Libra Ingenieros Civiles and R.J. Ingenieria, have teamed up with the U.S.-based RWL Water Group to build the plant, which they expect to open in the summer of 2017.  The plant will produce 21,960 cubic metres of water a day for more than 100,000 residents in the region.  The San Diego Tribune reports that Baja California may soon become home to a third desalination plant, with a capacity of 378,500 cubic metres per day, some of which it may sell to U.S consumers across the border.^[4]

At Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, researchers cite saline groundwater from coastal aquifers as “an alternative water source” for reverse osmosis technology—one that is favourable to seawater.^[5]  The study cites reduced membrane fouling and lower pre-treatment costs as advantages of using saline groundwater as feedwater.[^6]  The researchers’ methodology involved both fieldwork and laboratory approaches; comparative assessments of the “chemistry, microbiology, and physical properties” of both saline groundwater and seawater; and “reverse osmosis desalination experiments in a cross-flow system” to evaluate the permeate flux, and the salt rejection and fouling propensities of the different feedwater.^[7]

The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology in January 2016, was conducted with the collaboration of researchers at the university’s Institute for Water Research and the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, as well as the Israel Geological Society.  

Shikun & Binui is selling its holdings in Omis Water, the company that operates the Hadera desalination plant, to IDE, for 80 million NIS ($20,537,312 USD).[8]  IDE, which has been Shikun & Binui’s partner in the facility, holds the rest of the shares in Omis Water.  Shikun & Binui will report its sale to IDE as “pre-tax profit” in its financial statements.  According to their agreement, the parties have decided to include “further annual compensation based on the volume of desalination in the years left on the license.”[9]  The sale is still conditional upon the approval of other agents; and does not include Shikun & Binui’s rights to 50 percent of H2ID, the company that holds the contract for the facility.[10]