It’s high time for Seawater Desalination to benefit the entire world on many levels. Desalination Plants need to be employed as a way of life everywhere as soon as possible. Although it is encouraging to see desalination plants popping up here and there, they need to be the norm everywhere.
We also need floating desalination plants, where building a desalination plant is not feasible, such as the pictured floating desalination unit “Hydriada”, powered by wind and solar energy in Irakleia, Greece, the first of its kind. We also need many more desalination ships sent to areas either hit hard with drought or just not located near freshwater, to begin with.
We can either draw seawater into desalination plants and ships or pump it inland through pipelines to be treated in plants in other cities and rural areas. It is ridiculous that we don’t have enough water inland and have increasingly far too much in the oceans and rivers, and it is time to turn this around.
We also need to divert the water when faced with rising sea levels into reservoirs and canals built to move seawater and accommodate floodwater. A series of man-made saltwater canals could lead to desalination plants downstream.
Peterman Ice Island, Arctic Ocean Mark Terry – The Polar Explorer
The other huge point is that it is a good thing to remove water from the ocean when facing rising sea levels due to the melting of the polar regions, already causing damage on a drastic scale, particularly for coastal regions. What better time to increase efforts to pull water from the ocean, when so many in the world need freshwater desperately?
The freshwater icebergs are breaking up and melting before us. We need to harvest them once they have broken off and floated far enough away so as not to disturb the remaining ice sheets. Even though they were freshwater, once contaminated by seawater, they will require the desalinating process. We need to do more to harvest this freshwater resource for our survival, and in doing so we will be lessening the negative effects of too much freshwater going into the ocean. Capturing the freshwater before it goes into the ocean will lessen the destruction of shorelines and reduce flooding everywhere; it will slow down the growing pressure on the ocean floor, and with it increasing earthquakes and changes; since freshwater evaporates more readily than saltwater, superstorms heavenly laden with moisture can be reduced in number and severity; since freshwater is having an adverse effect on marine life by changing the salt content of the sea, this too could be another benefit.
Another main point to be considered when assessing the vast benefits of desalinized water is that the process not only removes salt but other impurities, parasites, bacteria, etc. Filtering and treating water should be another growing focus for every country, whether with adequate freshwater or not.
It would be great to see pipelines pumping water across the land, directly to desalination plants inland, ready to receive and process the saltwater. We have got to have huge reservoirs of fresh water, well-distributed throughout the lands, not only for people, animals, and agriculture, but to help with the fighting of wildfires which are devasting the land, wildlife, food sources, and property, helping warm up the land, increasing air pollution, and feeding global warming. It is imperative to have freshwater reservoirs, for fighting forest fires, hydrate land as a preventative measure, and even supply water to drought-stricken crops.
For a growing list of resources, suppliers, technology, and developments in all things related to seawater desalination for the world, visit the Manage the Waters of the World Desalination Page.
Communities and countries need to unite in bringing desalinized water to the growing number of millions who are going without potable water right now. Let’s help this industry grow by talking about it, sharing information, supporting the technology on any level, asking governments and corporations to help bring about setting up desalination ships and plants everywhere, and ensuring the water can be moved inland to irrigate and fill the needs of the area.