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Will Desalination Contribute to Sprawl?
by Brian Schmidt
The idea of converting our endless ocean water into something people and lawns can drink has been tried for decades without ever being cheap or environmentally sound.
The High Cost of Desalination
Desalination using distillation or reverse osmosis requires tremendous amounts of energy and currently costs three times as much as water obtained from other processes. Yet, desalination is being touted once again as a cheap, abundant, and environmentally beneficial technology for increasing the world’s dwindling supply of fresh water. Companies now claim that new, renewable technologies like solar power can provide water at an affordable cost. Left unsaid is the disposition of the concentrated saline sludge leftover from desalination, usually dumped into near-shore ocean waters.
How Desalination Enables Sprawl
Also left unsaid is that, at a broader level, the lack of water has been a physical limit on sprawl that substitutes for strong anti-sprawl regulation. The danger is that desaliniza-tion plants will overcome political opposition on the basis of promises for using cheap, renewable power sources. Even if “cheap and green” sources of energy to power desalination plants never bear out, once built, desalination plants would greatly expand sprawl. The lack of water will not prevent development forever if desalination spreads. Even if that desalination never becomes cheap and green, the cost of desalinized water will decrease as a percentage of the overall cost of housing. It’s a safe bet that home prices will continue to increase faster than the cost of desalinized water.
Simply put, cheap and “green” desalinized water, solar powered or otherwise, poses a serious threat to the environment. Because of desalination, the lack of water no longer provides protection against development. Areas where water is scarce often lack zoning protections against unwise development that creates sprawl and the saline sludge that desalination plants generate.
Containing Sprawl that Desalination will Bring
So what to do? We should not allow desalinization projects to proceed beyond the pilot stage until cheap and green renewable energy sources are proven, environmentally responsible solutions for saline-sludge waste products are implemented, and anti-sprawl zoning regulations for surrounding lands are strengthened.
Published Spring 2008 in Green Footnotes.
Page last updated May 26, 2008.
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