Shrimp boats coming back to shore after a day of fishing in the Gulf of California, in Puerto Penasco, Mexico. Environmental groups claim that releasing brine into the sea could harm sea life which would ultimately affect fishermen. — ©2023 The New york Times Company
EIGHTY kilometres south of the US border, at the edge of a city on the Gulf of California, a few hectares of dusty shrubs could determine the future of Arizona.
As the state’s two major sources of water, groundwater and the Colorado River, dwindle from drought, climate change and overuse, officials are considering a hydrological Hail Mary: the construction of a plant in Mexico to suck salt out of seawater, then pipe that water hundreds of kilometres, much of it uphill, to Phoenix.
The idea of building a desalination plant in Mexico has been discussed in Arizona for years. But now, a US$5bil (RM23.36bil)project proposed by an Israeli company is under serious consideration, an indication of how worries about water shortages are rattling policymakers in Arizona and across the American West.
On June 1, the state announced that the Phoenix area, the fastest-growing region in the country, doesn’t have enough groundwater to support all the future housing that has been approved. Cities and developers that want to build projects beyond what has been allowed would have to find new sources of water.
State officials are considering whether to set aside an initial US$750mil (RM3.5bil) toward the cost of the desalination project, although Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, has yet to endorse it.
“Desal in Mexico is a highly likely outcome for Arizona,” said Chuck Podolak, the state official in charge of finding new sources of water. Last year, lawmakers agreed to give his agency, the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, US$1bil (RM4.67bil) toward that mission. He said whatever water project gets built “will seem crazy and ambitious – until it’s complete. And that’s our history in Arizona.”
Desalination plants are common in coastal states such as California, Texas and Florida, and in more than 100 other countries. Israel gets more than 60% of its drinking water from the Mediterranean.
The Arizona project would be unusual because of the distance involved and the fact that the state is landlocked. The water would have to travel some 300km, climbing more than 600m along the way, to reach Phoenix.
The plant would allow Arizona to continue growing – but at a high cost.
It would flood the northern Gulf of California with waste brine, threatening one of Mexico’s most productive fisheries. It would carve a freeway-sized corridor through a US national monument and Unesco site, established to protect a fragile desert ecosystem. And the water it provided would cost roughly 10 times more than water from the Colorado River.
In a sense, Arizona has been here before. The state owes its boom to superhuman-scale water projects, culminating in the 540km US$4bil (RM18.7bil) aqueduct that diverts Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson.
IDE Technologies, the Israeli company behind the new desalination proposal, has seized on that legacy, calling its project “an infinite and unlimited reverse Colorado”.
That message has found an audience. According to IDE, even before the announcement of a groundwater shortage, representatives from Phoenix and a half-dozen cities around it met with the company to learn about the project.
Environmentalists contend that instead of importing water from another country, the state should protect its limited supplies by having fewer lawns, fewer swimming pools and, maybe, fewer houses.
“What Arizona really needs to do is implement stronger water conservation,” said Miche Lozano, who until recently was Arizona programme manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. “The pipeline is just such a big, dumb idea.”
The proposed source of Arizona’s salvation is Puerto Penasco, a city of 60,000 an hour south of the border. From the ocean, the city is a ribbon of luxury villas and high-rise condos, fronted by soft beaches unfurling into turquoise water. Tourists from Phoenix, who make up the bulk of visitors, call it by its Anglicized name, Rocky Point; its unofficial moniker is Arizona’s beach.
But behind the glamour is a city of unpaved roads and low cinder block structures, covered in dust and sand blown in from the desert around it. A third of the population lives in poverty. Among its other problems: Puerto Penasco can’t provide enough potable water for its own residents.
The city is a nightmare version of Arizona’s own future. Lacking surface water, it relies on underground aquifers, whose supply has dwindled as the population has grown. When tourism swells in summer, water pressure in the pipes drops; residents must rely on whatever they’ve managed to store in cisterns.
The Israeli company has said it would provide Puerto Penasco with some potable water as part of its proposal, though not how much or at what price. The head of the local water provider, Hector Acosta Felix, said some sort of desalination project is vital for Puerto Penasco’s future.
But one part of the plan poses a challenge: what to do with waste.
Desalination works by vacuuming up huge volumes of ocean water, then pushing it at high pressure through a series of membranes to filter out salt. Every 378 litres of seawater produces about 189 litres of potable water and another 189 litres of brine that has a salt content that is roughly twice as high as seawater.
IDE would release that brine into the sea. On the open ocean, waste brine can be quickly dispersed. But because Puerto Penasco is near the tip of the Gulf of California, effectively a long and shallow bay, the effects could be concentrated.
That could hurt the plankton that forms the base of the food chain, said Nelida Barajas Acosta, head of an environmental group called CEDO Intercultural. More than half of the fishing in Mexico is harvested from the Gulf of California.
“The effects on fisheries will be dramatic,” Acosta said. “The water is going into the US, but the environmental impacts stay in Mexico.”
Erez Hoter-Ishay, IDE’s project manager, said the discharge of brine wouldn’t harm ocean life, and suggested it might even be beneficial.
“We see in other desal facilities that life are flourishing next to it,” he told lawmakers.
It’s unclear whether Mexican officials would support the plan. The governor of Sonora, Alfonso Durazo, has said he opposes it. But the national government has jurisdiction over water in Mexico, and President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was quoted in January saying he was open to the idea. — ©2023 The New York Times Company
