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The Ocean's Greatest Gift
| Article
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10130 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1993 |
2,130 Words |
| Author
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Kurt Stehling
Kurt Stehling is chief scientist emeritus for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). |
Investing in large-scale desalination plants to provide ample fresh for the world's driest regions could end a major cause of famine conflict.
"Drought persists." "No rain in sight." "Water shortages plague region." These dread headlines and announcements from around the world-signifying imminent famine and starvation, or, at least, water rationing, crop losses, and the like--are increasingly commonplace.
While the less-developed world-Somalia, the Sudan, most of North Africa, and the continent's southern regions as well--suffers most from a lack of water and its concomitant horrors, the developed nations are not immune from nature's caprices. "California may face a seventh year of drought: Dry spell would be worst in at least four centuries"--so reads a prediction from the California department of Water Resources, in November 1992. Northern California, especially the Sacramento River basin, has been supplying water to the Los Angles basin via billion-dollar aqueducts and pipelines for some years. This past winter's storms may signal the end of the state's long drought, but with population and immigration still increasing, what will southern California do, not only for its irrigation and domestic use but also for industrial use--all amounting to about 50 billion gallons of fresh water per day.
There is no obvious answer to getting more water except from the adjacent Pacific Ocean, with its millions of cubic miles of (presently unusable) saltwater! The irony of this has not been lost on hydrologists, city planners, industrialists, and crop growers. With Sierra Nevada snows and the Colorado River as other depleting or uncertain sources, only the ocean- or large reservoirs of partly salty (brackish) water--must be exploited. But how?
Other U.S. areas, such as the Florida Keys, Honolulu, the Virgin Islands, Cape Cod, and Galveston are also facing water shortages, while being adjacent to the sea.
Of the moderately developed nations, the Arabian states around the Persian Gulf, with classic desert terrain, need great quantities of potable water for their oil refineries. (It takes 18 barrels of water to refine 1 barrel of oil, or 7 barrels just to pump or transport it.) The Arabs and Persians, having little underground water or aquifers (every time they drill a hole they hit oil) but lots of oil to burn, have developed energy-intensive distillation schemes to meet about 50 percent of their water needs.
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