Thirst or Desalination

Ina

Ina

Well-known Member
Location
Harris County, NE of Houston, Tx.
I keep hearing and reading about the decline of our water supply. "They" keep frightening us about running out of the life supporting fluid. We are told we are running out of water for agricultural purposes as well.
Yet we still build things like water parks.

What I'm not getting is why aren't we doing more with water desalination. I know it's costly, but there are ways to bring the cost down. A desalination plant could be powered by wind turbines. There are also desalination systems for your home that aren't to bad in price. You can even get small kits for boating or camping for less than $100.

We have entire families willing to pay for bottled water, as much as $50 to $100 a month. A home system would pay for itself in short order. There are already cities, such as Galveston, Texas, that have desalination plants for public drinking water.

I know that some believe that this will destroy our oceans, but if every last human drank from the ocean for a 100 years, it wouldn't deplete the oceans even enough to be measured. If we give it some forethought, I think we could build these desalination plants in such a way that we don't pollute our oceans. Instead of throwing the salt back into the ocean, we could clean for use, and quit digging it out of the ground.

What do you think of this? Or tell us of other ways you have thought about to combat our declining water supplies.:magnify:
 

Ina, this definitly makes one think! Especally considering all the bottled water purchased. I know some people use recycled "gray water" to water lawns and plants. I want to do further research on this now.
 
Desalination plants are built, maintained & operated with tax dollars. That requires tax increases. There are a lot of people who hate taxes, the government & anything to do with or related to environmental issues & causes.

If state govts tried to fund & construct water desalination plants prior to it getting to the point where it's a do or die situation, just like with global warming, there would be an uproar over it with certain sectors claiming it was all a hoax, based on "junk science" & an effort get more money out the taxpayers, etc, etc, etc.

It would be nice to see people voluntarily cut back on their water usage & stop wasting it.

As it is, many places that don't have adequate natural natural replenishment via ample annual rainfall, are finding themselves drinking that highly treated "grey water". It's happening in California & somewhere up in New England already.
 
The electric company, and telephone company, and television as well as the internet companies are funded by other means. It could work with a joint effort of several means.
Just cutting back with more water conservation is only a short term measure.
We have the technology, we just need to gather the attention of the people that are always looking for new industries to invest in, and plus we need to educate the populous.
We need to look long term at this problem.
By using desalination we would have less need to pump it out of the ground that is drying up. :wave:
 
I looks like they're working on it and talking about it Ina, but like you suggested, they may need to use alternative sources of energy to lower the cost. http://www.dallasnews.com/news/poli...ibilities-of-expanding-water-desalination.ece I'm very careful with my water use at home, I don't water the lawn very often, and try to work with Mother Nature for that, I don't let the water run when I'm brushing my teeth, etc., and I use a filter on my faucet and drink my own filtered water, I don't spend money on bottled water, they should outlaw those smaller bottles, too much plastic trash polluting our oceans and killing our sea life.
 
Maybe there's hope?

Vast freshwater reserves have been discovered under the ocean floor which scientists believe could sustain future generations.

Australian researchers claim to have found 500,000 cubic kilometres (120,000 cubic miles) of freshwater buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves off Australia, China, North America and South Africa.

The discovery comes as United Nations estimates suggest water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of the population of the world over the last century.

article-2519911-0E42D8FB00000578-53_634x406.jpg


Australian researchers have discovered vast freshwater reserves beneath the seabed on continental shelves


Lead author Vincent Post, from Flinders University, said: ‘The volume of this water resource is a hundred times greater than the amount we've extracted from the Earth's sub-surface in the past century since 1900.

‘Freshwater on our planet is increasingly under stress and strain so the discovery of significant new stores off the coast is very exciting.'

FULL STORY: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...nerations.html
Click to expand...
 
Wow Sea, That's a great discovery! Add desalination in the parts of the world that might not be able to access those under ocean reservoirs, and maybe the future doesn't look so bad. :thank you: for that information.
 
Ina said:
The electric company, and telephone company, and television as well as the internet companies are funded by other means. It could work with a joint effort of several means.
Just cutting back with more water conservation is only a short term measure.
We have the technology, we just need to gather the attention of the people that are always looking for new industries to invest in, and plus we need to educate the populous.
We need to look long term at this problem.
By using desalination we would have less need to pump it out of the ground that is drying up. :wave:
Click to expand...

Well, those are all privately owned public utilities who are constantly raising their rates as it is. Currently, these companies are in charge of extracting, treating & delivering the water to you using publicly owned facilities, but they don't own the water itself, so they can't charge whatever they want for it. If privately owned companies built water desalination plants financed by investors, they could charge whatever they wanted. But then of course, there's the issue of delivering the water to you. Every company who owned & operated a desalination plant would want & need to tie in to the existing utilities lines, otherwise they'd have to dig their own lines in order to pipe it to your house. It would be impossible.

And as you said, desalination plants are costly to run. Also, what about inland or "land-locked" states & cities that aren't anywhere near a coastline? States like Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, or Montana? How would we get the desalinated water to them & all the cities & towns? And how much would all that cost?

I wholeheartedly agree with you that water is a huge issue & one that people need to think about now. There is plenty of water on the planet & plenty of "fresh", non-saltwater. Every water molecule that has ever existed on Earth since it's formation, still exists today. The problem is that after we use it & dirty it up, it takes forever for it to work it's way through the hydrological cycle & find it's way back to the underground supply. I read somewhere, that every drop of water that comes out of your tap, takes an average of 100 years to make it back down to the underground aquifers where it originated, where it will have been filtered & purified by decades of seeping through hundreds of feet of rock & sediment.

IMO, the only way to ensure that there will be plenty of fresh usable water for your kids & grand kids, is for us all to become stingy with it now. I think if everyone became "water misers", we could slow the usage down enough for nature to catch up. But, we know that will just never happen, don't we? There are people who either don't believe it's a problem or just don't care. They are going to take long showers, wash their cars every week & over water their lawns in spite of any warnings of possible dire consequences.

Get ready (in those areas that don't receive a lot of annual rainfall which replenishes underground supplies), to start drinking & bathing in treated sewage. It's already being done in America right now. And will probably be the only viable solution in the future.

BTW... for those of us who live in humid climates, there are contraptions similar to de-humidifiers, that extract moisture right out of the air. They just have better filters than regular humidifiers. They are already popular in Japan & may find a market in certain parts of the US in years to come.
 
Ina said:
I keep hearing and reading about the decline of our water supply. "They" keep frightening us about running out of the life supporting fluid. We are told we are running out of water for agricultural purposes as well.
Yet we still build things like water parks.

What I'm not getting is why aren't we doing more with water desalination. I know it's costly, but there are ways to bring the cost down. A desalination plant could be powered by wind turbines. There are also desalination systems for your home that aren't to bad in price. You can even get small kits for boating or camping for less than $100.

We have entire families willing to pay for bottled water, as much as $50 to $100 a month. A home system would pay for itself in short order. There are already cities, such as Galveston, Texas, that have desalination plants for public drinking water.

I know that some believe that this will destroy our oceans, but if every last human drank from the ocean for a 100 years, it wouldn't deplete the oceans even enough to be measured. If we give it some forethought, I think we could build these desalination plants in such a way that we don't pollute our oceans. Instead of throwing the salt back into the ocean, we could clean for use, and quit digging it out of the ground



What do you think of this? Or tell us of other ways you have thought about to combat our declining water supplies.:magnify:
Click to expand...


Interesting topic, I've wondered why more is not being done too and I agree with the comments on bottled water.
Here is an article on a solar plant in California..

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-drought-Solar-desalination-plant-5326024.php
 
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