Photos Calcium-Deprived
"Only after production began did we discover that much of the water was actually being channeled to agricultural areas." But, as the team reports in their paper, 69 percent of the global water supply goes toward irrigation. So by dropping the price of desalinated water in places where high-value cash crops are being grown, watering those thirsty plants becomes economically feasible. In Spain almost a quarter of desalinated water is used for irrigation and an Australian survey found that more than half of the people in that country could envision the use of desalinated water for growing vegetables, the team reports. In the United States desalinated water hasn't yet made it into agricultural use, says Andrew Chang, director of the Center for Water Resources at the University of California in Riverside. But that's not to say it won't someday. As in Israel, it's all a matter of economics. The municipal desalination plant in Santa Barbara, California, for instance, was built to stave off droughts. But has never been needed since it costs more to produce desalinated water than to import water from other parts of the state, Chang told Discovery News. Still, as water becomes scarcer, those prices will change and the Israeli experience could become common. Related Links: Santa Barbara County Public Works: Desalination |
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