wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  PlanetArk 19 Jun 07
Parched Australia Plans Giant Desalination Plant

WWF 19 Jun 07
Desalination: Option or distraction for a thirsty world?

BBC 19 Jun 07
Desalination 'not the solution'

Yahoo News 18 Jun 07
Desalination no answer to water crisis: WWF
By Laura MacInnis

Removing salt from sea water to overcome a worldwide shortage of drinking water could end up worsening the crisis, environmental group WWF warned on Tuesday.

Desalination, the filtering and evaporation of sea water, is very energy-intensive and involves significant emissions of greenhouse gases that scientists say are a factor in the shrinking supplies of freshwater, the Swiss-based group said. Spain,

Saudi Arabia, Australia and other arid countries should rely more on water conservation and recycling and avoid huge desalination projects that have been linked to pollution and ecosystem damage.

"The quite possibly mistaken lure of widespread water availability from desalination ... has the potential to drive a major misdirection of public attention, policy and funds away from the pressing need to use all water wisely," it said.

Concerns about global warming, which could exacerbate droughts and erode the world's icecaps and glaciers, which provide 69 percent of global freshwater supplies, are expected to spur investments in the technology.

Some farmers have used water from desalination to grow "unsuitably thirsty crops in fundamentally dry areas," the WWF said, an unsustainable trend given its high energy costs: "It seems unlikely that desalinated agriculture is economic anywhere."

"Regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment," it said.

The WWF, or World Wildlife Fund, estimated there were more than 10,000 desalination plants around the world.

It said the sector would likely grow exponentially in coming years as governments seek to supply water to fast-growing arid areas in the United States, India, China and elsewhere.

Half of the world's desalination capacity is in the Gulf area, where wealthy oil-producing nations use it for about 60 percent of their water needs. Australian cities have also relied heavily on the technology and Spain has used it extensively to support real estate development, agriculture and even golf courses along its Mediterranean coast.

Large-scale desalination engineering could also endanger sea life, the WWF said, urging further research into the tolerance of marine organisms and ecosystems to higher salinity and brine waste, byproducts of the salt removal process.

While desalination could have important uses in some cases, such as environments with brackish water, the WWF said that big plants ought to be approved only in circumstances where they meet a real need and must be built and operated in a way that minimizes broader environmental damage.

BBC 19 Jun 07
Desalination 'not the solution'

Turning salt water into drinking water is not a solution to tackle global water scarcity, the WWF has said.

A report by the environmental group said a growth in the energy intensive technology would increase emissions and damage coastal and river habitats. More attention should instead be paid to conserving supplies, it suggested.

The study was published as Australia announced plans to build one of the world's biggest desalination plants to supply drinking water to Melbourne.

"Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy intensive and greenhouse gas emitting way to get water," said Jamie Pittock, director of WWF's global freshwater programme. "It may have a place in the world's future freshwater supplies but regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment."

The report called for greater emphasis on managing existing supplies before the go-ahead was given to major water projects.

It added that new desalination plants, which were primarily located in coastal areas, should also be subject to tighter impact assessments to minimise damage to the marine environment.

Advances in technology meant that it was also possible to develop alternative "manufactured water" systems, such as treating waste water, the authors wrote.

Securing supplies

Desalination plants already play a major role in providing water for drinking and irrigation in areas such as the Middle East, where freshwater supplies are scarce. But many other nations, including the US, China and Spain are turning to the technology to meet growing demands.

"Water supply, on a global basis, is a problem," commented Richard Bowen, a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. "Desalination is set to become more important because the demand for water is going to increase, and a large percentage of the world's population is situated in coastal areas."

Professor Bowen, from the University of Wales' School of Engineering, Swansea, said the environmental impact of desalination was well understood by the industry.

"The basic problem is that by taking sea water and producing fresh water, you are going to get a stream of fresh water, which is what you want, but you also produce a concentrated salt stream," he explained. "You have to be very careful what you do with that concentrated stream and where you put it back into the environment.

"There have been quite careful studies into the effects of this, so it is a consideration in the development of a new plant."

The government in the Australian state of Victoria on Tuesday announced plans to build one of the world's biggest desalination plants near Melbourne.

The project, which is expected to be completed by 2011, is part of a scheme to "drought-proof" water supplies to the nation's second largest city. Southern Australia has been in the grips of a six-year drought, the worst on record.

The WWF report acknowledges that the technology had a "limited place in water supply", but each project should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, it argued.

It recommended: "Desalination plants... should only be constructed where they are found to meet a genuine need to increase water supply and are the best and least damaging method."

WWF 19 Jun 07
Desalination: Option or distraction for a thirsty world?

Gland, Switzerland – Making drinking water out of sea water is a growing trend but a potential threat to the environment that could also exacerbate climate change, says WWF in a global review of desalination plants worldwide.

The WWF review, Making water: Desalination – option or distraction for a thirsty world?, shows that some of the driest and thirstiest places are turning to desalination. These include regions where water problems affect large, populous areas — Australia, the Middle East, Spain, the UK and US, with India and China following suit.

“Desalinating the sea is an expensive, energy-intensive and greenhouse gas emitting way to get water,” says Jamie Pittock, Director of WWF’s Global Freshwater Programme. “It may have a place in the world's future freshwater supplies but regions still have cheaper, better and complementary ways to supply water that are less risky to the environment.”

It is estimated that around 60 per cent of freshwater needs in the Arabian Gulf are met through desalination, and the Australian city of Perth may be looking to source one-third of its freshwater the same way.

Spain is devoting an astonishing proportion of its desalinated water to agriculture — at 22 per cent the highest level in the world – as well as to holiday resorts in arid areas.

Impacts of desalination include brine build-up, increased greenhouse gas emissions, destruction of prized coastal areas and reduced emphasis on conservation of rivers and wetlands.

Many of the areas of most intensive desalination activity also have a history of damaging natural water resources, particularly groundwater.

Managing water demand and assessing impacts of any large-scale engineering solution are needed early in order to avert irreversible damage to nature and the cost overruns, often paid by citizens over the long haul.

Sustainable sources of water start with protecting natural assets such as rivers, floodplains and wetlands. These natural systems purify and provide water as well as protect against extreme or catastrophic events.

“Large desalination plants might rapidly become ‘the new dams’ and obscure the importance of real conservation of rivers and wetlands,” adds Pittock. “As with any relatively new engineering such as large dams that grew up in the 50s, the negatives become known when it is too late or too expensive to fix. What we need most is a new attitude to water not unchecked expansion of water engineering.”

PlanetArk 19 Jun 07
Parched Australia Plans Giant Desalination Plant

SYDNEY - Australia is planning to build one of the world's largest desalination plants as part of a $4.9 billion (US$4 billion) programme to provide drinking water to the nation's second-largest city Melbourne.

The plan, announced Tuesday, followed a warning from environmental group WWF that removing salt from sea water to overcome a worldwide shortage of drinking water could end up worsening the crisis.

The Victorian state government said water bills for consumers could double to fund the A$3.1 billion plant planned for Wonthaggi, south-east of Melbourne. It also plans another A$1 billion expanding pipelines and the city's water grid.

The plan was part of a drought-proofing package to generate 150 billion litres of drinking water annually -- about one-third of Melbourne's current consumption, Australian Associated Press (AAP) reported.

Much of southern Australia has been in the grip of the worst drought in living memory and many reservoirs feeding major cities and towns are at alarmingly low levels. Water restrictions are widespread.

The desalination plant will be Australia's largest and is expected to be complete by 2011.

The Swiss-based WWF on Tuesday criticised desalination, the filtering and evaporation of sea water, as energy-intensive and involving significant emissions of greenhouse gases that are blamed for causing climate change.

Australia, Spain, Saudi Arabia and other arid countries should rely more on water conservation and recycling and avoid huge desalination projects that have been linked to pollution and ecosystem damage, it said.

Concerns about global warming are expected to spur investments in the technology. But many scientists say global warming will exacerbate droughts and melt the world's icecaps and glaciers, a major source of global freshwater supplies.

Glaciers around the globe are already melting rapidly, particularly in parts of Europe and the Himalayas.

The WWF estimated there were more than 10,000 desalination plants around the world.
links
Related articles on Singapore: water issues and Singapore's wild shores
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com