Making fresh water from the sea was once the preserve of cruise ships and oil-rich Gulf states that could afford the huge cost of energy required to remove the salt. But as rivers, lakes and aquifers dry up, rains become less reliable, and the cost of desalination has fallen, communities in all parts of the world have begun to build and plan plants to turn oceans, river estuaries, salty ground water and even sewage into clean water for factories, farms and homes.

The rise in fresh water production was the biggest ever recorded at 9,5-million cubic meters a day, the annual report by analysts Global Water Intelligence will say on Wednesday. That is equivalent to about 10% of global capacity.

Those desalinating and reusing water now include some of the world’s poorest countries, including Algeria, Chenai in India and Ghana; wet but over-populated cities like London and Dublin; and those far from the sea, most notably a plan by the United States state of Nevada to build a desalination plant in Mexico in return for keeping a greater share of the Colorado River.

Rivers flowing backwards
With water “manufacturing” technology allowing people to change fundamentally the geography of freshwater on such a large scale, Christopher Gasson, GWI’s publisher, talks of “rivers flowing backwards”.

“People do desalination when they run out of opportunities, and the problem is the world overall is running out of opportunities: groundwater is over-exploited to the extent it’s becoming saline and unusable; rivers are being drained; new dams are becoming less and less viable [and] long-distance transfer is expensive and controversial,” said Gasson.

“People are being forced to look to non-traditional alternatives for water supply. For coastal people desalination is the obvious one; if you’re inland then there may be some brackish water underground you could desalinate, or you might need to look at reuse.”

The fundamental reason for the rise of water manufacturing is a simple gap between demand and supply: in 2006 a report from the International Water Management Institute found one-in-three people in the world were “enduring one form or another of water scarcity” — such as “when women work hard to get water, [or] you want to allocate more but can’t”.

Growing numbers of people; richer lifestyles; demand for more water-intensive food such as meat, and dwindling supplies are expected to increase that number — to up to half the projected global population or more in the middle of this century.
And that is despite an expected doubling of total water manufacturing capacity between now and 2016, according to UK-based GWI.

The falling cost of desalination, thanks to technology improvements is key, and the reuse of water can be cheaper still.

Developments in membranes
Contacts have been signed to deliver desalinated water in Algeria and Israel for 55-56 cents per cubic metre, and reuse plants can now turn sewage into drinking water for between 40 and 45c per cubic metre, said Gasson.

Comparisons between the energy needs of different desalination methods — heating up water for distillation or pushing it through membranes to filter the salt — have also become much closer. Continuing developments in membranes — which one day are likely to be modelled on the “technology” nature uses in kidneys and mangroves — will continue to bring down costs and energy needs, said Gasson.

Systems using carbon-free energy are also being trialled: nuclear desalination in the United Arab Emirates, solar power in Australia, and biodiesel from plants — with cooking fats also slated as a future possibility — at a desalination plant built by Thames Water in London.

Despite the advances, there are still serious objections to manufacturing water. The WWF remains concerned about building new facilities in often environmentally-sensitive coastal and wetland areas; about the intake of seawater which is home to millions of tiny species, and discharge of the remaining brine, which can be contaminated with chemicals from cleaning the membranes and particles from corroding pipes.

Concerns about the energy use of plants also still remain, especially where they are still dependent on fossil fuels, or if they could divert renewable resources which could otherwise replace existing carbon-intensive energy supplies. Residents in upmarket Monterey, California have long objected to a desalination plant being built there because they fear it would encourage more development.

Barrier of cost
The Namibian capital Windhoek is unusual in that it pumps recycled sewage directly back into the public drinking supply, whereas every other water reuse project in the world — from Salt Lake City to Singapore — adds unnecessary cost by using the recycled water only for irrigation or industry, or pumping it into reservoirs, aquifers or rivers, and then pumping it back out and cleaning it again, in order to avoid a public outcry.

Instead, critics prefer a combination of dozens of small improvements to existing pipes and irrigation channels, switching to less thirsty crops and other measures to save water. This approach was recently backed by a major report from the 2030 Water Resources Group, an alliance of mostly private companies with huge water needs, including Coca-Cola and brewers SAB Miller, and the World Bank group.

And there remains the barrier of cost. Desalination and reuse might be getting cheaper, but prices are still unaffordable for millions of farmers worldwide who have long relied on “free’”water, said Gasson: “There’s no solution to the over-exploitation of natural water resources in agriculture. Full-stop.”

Namibia: toilet to tap
The capital Windhoek, surrounded by desert, has the world’s only system that treats wastewater and putts it straight back into the public water supply system, mixed with water from the city’s main reservoir. The success of the scheme is credited to a long-standing public acceptance campaign, including advertising, education in schools and an “excellent” water-quality record.

Arizona and Nevada, US: Desert desalination
US states and Mexico share the Colorado river under a treaty signed in 1922. Now it is suggested Nevada funds a desalination plant in Mexico or California in return for more of their river water. In Arizona they have discussed reopening a mothballed desalination plant to process farmland runoff and pump it back into the river.

UK: Desperate measures in the capital
Despite its rainy reputation London receives less rainfall than Rome, Dallas or Istanbul. To cope with an expected 800 000 more residents by 2016, and more water-hungry appliances like power showers, Thames Water, the capital’s water company, has built a desalination plant next to its Becton sewage works, which it says will help cope with peak demands.

Jordan: Simple, cheaper solutions

Jordan is one of the most water-stressed nations on Earth, and one of the poorest. There is talk of a desalination plant and mega water transfer across the country. For now, though, the focus is on improving irrigation, collecting rainwater in cisterns and small dams, replacing water-hungry crops with food suited to an arid climate, and researching wastewater reuse for irrigation. – guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2010

Solar Quotes

In highly populated developing nations, water shortages and poor access to clean water has been an increasingly common concern. Currently 1.1 billion people living without access to safe drinking water. Even so, the problem seems far away in the minds of many who are living in more privileged circumstances. However, that may be about to change.

Milton Clark, a senior health and science adviser for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says he worries that these water issues that are currently emerging will eventually develop into bitter conflicts in the not too distant future when these dry states in the U.S. become increasingly desperate.

“We will, in fact, get into major water wars,” Clark said. “You will see water wars coming in every way, shape or form. In the U.S., there are some leading politicians who have said the Great Lakes do, in fact, belong (to everyone) and all water should be nationalized and this certainly is a concern.”

Ohio Lt.-Gov. Lee Fisher recently stirred up controversy when he told an economic development summit that the Great Lakes region may be only a few years away from selling water to other U.S. states in need.

“I think it’s fair to say that we’re going to see in the next decade states and other countries looking for ways to get access to our fresh water supply, and we’re going to have to make some tough decisions about whether we want that to happen and, if so, how,” Fisher said.

Last year the US government issued a report stating that the heavy growth in the American Southwest region “will inevitably result in increasingly costly, controversial, and unavoidable trade-off choices.”

Of course, we’re not actually running out of H20 from a macro perspective. It’s still around like it was millions of years ago. What we’re running out of it the right kind of water in the right places. Humans haven’t always wisely built civilizations close to vast fresh water supplies, but vast fresh water supplies are exactly what large populations require. Nearly all of Earth’s water is in the ocean (97%) where it does us little good as drinking water unless it is desalinated—an expensive and energy intensive process. But people, plants and animals all need fresh water to thrive, and as we’ve seen with oil, when resources dwindle—or are even just perceived to be dwindling whether or not they actually are—things can get nasty.

Wired magazine’s Mathew Powers points out that “like oil, water is not equitably distributed or respectful of political boundaries; about 50 percent of the world’s freshwater lies in a half-dozen lucky countries.”

He notes that “freshwater is the ultimate renewable resource, but humanity is extracting and polluting it faster than it can be replenished. Rampant economic growth — more homes, more businesses, more water-intensive products and processes, a rising standard of living — has simply outstripped the ready supply, especially in historically dry regions. Compounding the problem, the hydrologic cycle is growing less predictable as climate change alters established temperature patterns around the globe.”

But with all of this pessimism is there any good news? Well, the good news is that as people become more aware of the need for water conservation, the more wasteful habits are curbed. Americans are using 20 percent less water per capita than they did just a generation ago, so conservation education appear to be working to some extent.

With advanced technologies and more prudent water usage, the majority of Earth’s inhabitants will be able to continue to enjoy the luxury of clean water for a long time to come. Yes, we need to fundamentally rethink water usage and plenty of bigger changes are needed, but at least we’re heading in the right direction. With better stewardship and improved city planning, humans will likely be able to avert a good portion of the more disastrous scenarios.

Rebecca Sato. The Daily Galaxy

Water Rhapsody grey water systems and WaterRhapsody rainwater harvesting systems have been directly solving the water scarcity isssues in South Africa for the past 16 years.

1,664 – That’s how many cubic meters of water that the average North-American uses in a year, the highest amount per person in the world by far. In second place is Asia with 644 cubic meters. The world average is 626 cubic meters of water per person/year.

Photo: Flickr, CC

1,000 – That’s how many liters of water it takes to grow a kilogram of wheat. That might seem a lot, but…

15,000 – That’s how many liters of water it takes to get a kilogram of beef. The meaty diet of most North-Americans and Europeans uses around 5,000 liters of water a day, while they use around 100-250 liters to drink and wash. If you want to reduce your water consumption, think about what you eat.

70-80% – Agriculture uses around 70-80% of the water used by humans. If you look at it from the glass-half-full (no pun intended) angle, you’ll find that the use of water for agriculture in most places is very inefficient, so big gains could easily be made.

30% – Just changing irrigation practices can improve water efficiency by 30%, and more than that is probably possible by using techniques developed in countries that don’t get much rain (Israel, etc).

9 Billion – Trade can also help. The US is about twice as water-efficient as Mexico when it comes to growing cereals. So when Mexico imports cereals from the US, it is also “saving” water. This is estimated to be 9 billion cubic meters of water for the US-Mexico trade.