July 2, 2007 — On a one-acre site alongside a string of shrimp boats docked on the Brownsville ship channel stands a $2.2 million assembly of pipes, sheds, and humming machinery — Texas' entree into global efforts to make sea water suitable to drink.
Opening a small spigot at the end of a fat pipe, plant operator Joel del Rio fills a plastic glass with what he says will taste "like regular bottled water."
"Sea water," he said. "It's never gonna run out."
The plant is a pilot project for the state's $150 million, full-scale sea water desalination plant slated for construction in 2010.
Desalting sea water is expensive, mostly because of the energy required. Current cost estimates run at about $650 per acre foot (326,000 gallons), as opposed to $200 for purifying the same amount of fresh water.
However, it is a growing field around the world as governments and private investors ante up where water drinkable needs are crucial.
About two-thirds of the world's desalinated water is produced in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and North Africa. Perth, Australia, is looking to meet a third of its fresh water demand by removing salt from sea water.
In March, Israel showed off its plant at the Mediterranean port of Ashkelon that can process 87 million gallons of water a day. Singapore opened a sea water desalination plant in 2005 hoping it will meet at least 10 percent of its water needs. Two months ago, General Electric Co. announced a $220 million contract to build a plant in South Africa.
Global output is still relatively minute — less than 0.1 percent of all drinking water. But according to a recent report by Global Water Intelligence, the worldwide desalination industry is expected to grow 140 percent over the next decade, with $25 billion in capital investment by 2010, or $56 billion by 2015.
While the United States has hundreds of plants to purify brackish ground water, desalination of saltier sea water is just getting started. In Florida, a $158 million sea water desalination plant in the Tampa Bay area opened in March after years of delays.
California hopes to get about half a million acre feet of water a year from desalination, said Fawzi Karajeh, chief of water recycling and desalination for the state Department of Water Resources.
That may seems a tiny portion of the state's yearly requirement of 70 million acre feet, "but every drop counts," Karajeh said.
An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, or about enough to supply two homes for one year.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry began pushing for Gulf of Mexico desalination in 2002, after a state water plan determined that hundreds of communities could face water shortages in the next 50 years.
The Brownsville venture got fast-tracked during a period of alarming drought and rapid population growth. From 1990 to 2000, the Brownsville area grew 43 percent to 372,000 people, and the population is expected to approach 500,000 by 2020.
