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Our First Sip of SeawaterScripps researchers race to make desalination eco-friendly while there's still timeJuly/August 2008By Robert Monroe There's one way Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego researchers see the future of desalination in California going. Before a regulatory structure can take shape to govern how seawater is treated and transported to a thirsty public, a gubernatorial order will be handed down that fast-tracks the construction of desalination plants during an episode of extreme drought when battles over water turn violent. Ecological casualties would be assured.  
It's decidedly not what coastal engineer Scott Jenkins and marine biologist Jeffrey Graham hope for. Since 2000, the two have served as consultants to two desalination projects in Southern California that have been proposed by the Connecticut technology firm Poseidon Resources. In the course of their inquiry, the two scientists have come to see widespread construction of desalination plants as inevitable for California but hope that when they debut, state regulators and nature itself are ready for them. "Are these plants really going to be there when we need them?" said Jenkins, "Will they be there to drought-proof us?" Next page: The world's largest reservoir |
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