HELP GROW OUR ECONOMY AND SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT – WE NEED A ST. AUGUSTINE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, SEASHORE AND COASTAL PARKWAY.
How can I help?
1. Read “SAVING ST. AUGUSTINE,” backpage editorial by Faye Armitage from Folio Weekly, http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=5377.0;wap2
2. Go to www.staugustgreen.com and read the draft legislation and what the park would do and why.
3. WATCH KEN BURNS’ FILM on PBS starting September 27, 2009 – six nights, twelve hours (“THE NATIONAL PARKS – America’s Best Idea”).
4. Write Senators Bill Nelson and George Lemieux, Rep. John Mica and Rep. Corrine Brown and ask them to introduce the legislation and hold hearings.
5. Contact your City and County Commissioners, Chamber of Commerce, civic, social, veterans and fraternal organizations and ask them to support it. Encourage students and teachers to discuss the park and what we need to preserve here in St. Johns County, and why and how we’re going to do it.
YES WE CAN
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Countdown: Three Days to Ken Burns' "THE NATIONAL PARKS -- America's Best Idea" on PBS
St. Augustine's seawall needs replacing -- the National Park Service can do it right, without bankrupting City, taxpayers.
HELP GROW OUR ECONOMY AND SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT – WE NEED A ST. AUGUSTINE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, SEASHORE AND COASTAL PARKWAY.
How can I help?
1. Read “SAVING ST. AUGUSTINE,” backpage editorial by Faye Armitage from Folio Weekly, http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=5377.0;wap2
2. Go to www.staugustgreen.com and read the draft legislation and what the park would do and why.
3. WATCH KEN BURNS’ FILM on PBS starting September 27, 2009 – six nights, twelve hours (“THE NATIONAL PARKS – America’s Best Idea”).
4. Write Senators Bill Nelson and George Lemieux, Rep. John Mica and Rep. Corrine Brown and ask them to introduce the legislation and hold hearings.
5. Contact your City and County Commissioners, Chamber of Commerce, civic, social, veterans and fraternal organizations and ask them to support it. Encourage students and teachers to discuss the park and what we need to preserve here in St. Johns County, and why and how we’re going to do it.
YES WE CAN!
NY TImes: Crystal Lee Sutton, the Real-Life ‘Norma Rae,’ Is Dead at 68
Published: September 15, 2009
Crystal Lee Sutton, the union organizer whose real-life stand on her worktable at a textile factory in North Carolina in 1973 was the inspiration for the Academy Award-winning movie “Norma Rae,” died Friday in Burlington, N.C. She was 68.
Sally Field in 'Norma Rae' (Youtube.com)The cause was brain cancer, her son Jay Jordan said.
Ms. Sutton (then Crystal Lee Jordan) was a 33-year-old mother of three earning $2.65 an hour folding towels at the J. P. Stevens plant in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., when she took her stand. Low pay and poor working conditions had impelled her to take a leading role in efforts to unionize the plant. She was met with threats, she said.
“Management and others treated me as if I had leprosy,” she later said in an interview for Alamance Community College, in Graham, N.C., which she attended in the 1980s.
After months trying to organize co-workers, Ms. Sutton was fired. When the police, summoned by the management, came to take her away, she made one last act of defiance.
“I took a piece of cardboard and wrote the word ‘union’ on it in big letters, got up on my worktable, and slowly turned it around,” she said in the interview. “The workers started cutting their machines off and giving me the victory sign. All of a sudden the plant was very quiet.”
Within a year, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union had won the right to represent 3,000 employees at seven plants in Roanoke Rapids, including J. P. Stevens, which was then the second-largest textile manufacturer in the country.
In 1977, a court ordered that Ms. Sutton be rehired and receive back wages. She returned to work for two days, then quit and went to work as an organizer for the union.
For legal reasons, Ms. Sutton’s name was not used in the 1979 movie “Norma Rae,” for which Sally Field won the Oscar for best actress, a Golden Globe and the best-actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, all in 1980.
Bruce Raynor, who is now president of Workers United and executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union, worked with Ms. Sutton in her organizing career.
In a statement on Monday, he said, “The fact that Crystal was a woman in the ’70s, leading a struggle of thousands of other textile workers against very powerful, virulently anti-union mill companies, inspired a whole generation of people — of women workers, workers of color and white workers.”
Crystal Lee Pulley was born in Roanoke Rapids on Dec. 31, 1940, a daughter of Albert and Odell Blythe Pulley. Both her parents worked in the mills and, starting in her late teens, so did she.
Ms. Sutton’s first marriage, to Larry Jordan Jr., ended in divorce. Besides her son Jay, she is survived by her husband of 32 years, Lewis Sutton Jr.; two daughters, Elizabeth Watts and Renee Jordan; two other sons, Mark Jordan and Eric Sutton; two sisters, Geraldine Greeson and Syretha Medlin; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
After more than a decade as a union organizer, Ms. Sutton earned certification as a nursing assistant from Alamance Community College in 1988. In later years, she ran a day care center in her home.
Jay Jordan said his mother kept a photograph of Ms. Field, in the climactic scene from “Norma Rae,” on her living room wall.
Anti-union animus pervades St. Johns County Republicans
Reading in the St. Augustine Record recently the antics of our all-Republican St. Johns County Commission vis a vis the firemen's union, I am appalled. They remind me of such union-busting organizations as J.P. Stevens, whose effort to bust unions in North Carolina led to the movie, "Norma Rae."
On one of our local hate websites, the Sheriff's erstwhile bagman, MICHAEL GOLD, has used the term "agitators" to refer to firemen who belong to a proud, free, democratic trade union. How trite.
"Agitators?" That's the same term the KKK used to refer to people who came to St. Augustine to help local people fight for their rights.
Every single legislative victory for human rights was made possible by unions, including OSHA, MSHA, minimum wage, eight-hour day, laws against child labor.
We need more "agitators" pressing for human rights. For as Studs Turkel wrote about Stetson Kennedy, our local KKK-busting civil rights hero: "With half a dozen Stetson Kennedys, we can transform our society into one of truth, grace and beauty."
We need more agitators and activists -- we need more people who ask questions and aren't afraid of authority, people like my Georgetown University Professor Jan Karski (see below). People like Stetson Kennedy.
Please explain this to me, MICHAEL GOLD (or other union-busters): Ronald Reagan encouraged Solidarnosc (SOlidarity), the free democratic Polish trade union, as a means of ending Communism.
Thus, why do you hate an honest public employee union that wants for their firemen members what Samuel Gompers said every union should want (MORE)?
"Agitators?" This country was founded by "agitators" -- real men with real courage -- people like Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Sam Adams, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Paine.
Anyone who uses the word "agitators" as a pejorative is a closet KKK wannabee -- not to be taken seriously. If they ever read The Federalist Papers (or Thomas Paine's Common Sense) they probably wouldn't understand it.
We Americans have a right to rock the boat -- as do the firemen -- it's our boat.
It's our country.
The angry, anti-fireman's union Republicans hereabout remind me of a story about a Republican Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge, Elmer Jacob Schnackenberg, who often tormented counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) at oral arguments.
Judge Schnakenberg, so the story goes, once asked NLRB attorney Peter McC. Giesey (later a USDOL ALJ), why it was that NLRB always supported the union. Giesey replied to the effect that, well, your honor, "the fundamental policy of the government is to encourage collective bargaining, and you can't have collective bargaining unless there's someone to bargain with." Get it?
From the remarks made by anti-union Republicans, including obscene one that won a "brickbat" from Folio Weekly (and which we won't quote here), you'd think at least one Commissioner was going to pop a cork because firemen had a union and wanted to negotiate.
They need their consciousness raised -- the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is a really good union, with good members, good staff and good lawyers.
We didn't see the County Administrator or Commissioners take a pay cut.
The County must bargain in good faith with the firemen's union, IAFF. County Commissioners and other officials take an oath to uphold the law.
Anything less is unAmerican.
Anything less could be costly in the long term, both in litigation and in lost productivity and public safety.
Anything less is bullying and "Boulwareism," a practice named after Lemuel Boulware, the GE exec who hired Ronald Reagan to do propaganda, and whose anti-union tactics ("take-it-or-leave-it") are now called "Boulwareism," and are per se considered an Unfair Labor Practice. NLRB v. General Electric, 418 F.2d 736 (2d Cir. 1969), 397 U.S. 965 (197).
Florida has a Public Employee Relations Commission that functions like the NLRB where Unfair Labor Practices are concerned. Perpahs PERC can help teach St. Johns County Commissioners to respect our firemen, without publicly insulting them and insulting their representatives as they try to engage in collective bargaining.
Boulwareism may violate Florida law, to wit, Florida Statute 447.309
Collective bargaining; approval or rejection.--
(1) After an employee organization has been certified pursuant to the provisions of this part, the bargaining agent for the organization and the chief executive officer of the appropriate public employer or employers, jointly, shall bargain collectively in the determination of the wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment of the public employees within the bargaining unit. The chief executive officer or his or her representative and the bargaining agent or its representative shall meet at reasonable times and bargain in good faith. In conducting negotiations with the bargaining agent, the chief executive officer or his or her representative shall consult with, and attempt to represent the views of, the legislative body of the public employer. Any collective bargaining agreement reached by the negotiators shall be reduced to writing, and such agreement shall be signed by the chief executive officer and the bargaining agent. Any agreement signed by the chief executive officer and the bargaining agent shall not be binding on the public employer until such agreement has been ratified by the public employer and by public employees who are members of the bargaining unit, subject to the provisions of subsections (2) and (3). However, with respect to statewide bargaining units, any agreement signed by the Governor and the bargaining agent for such a unit shall not be binding until approved by the public employees who are members of the bargaining unit, subject to the provisions of subsections (2) and (3).
(2)(a) Upon execution of the collective bargaining agreement, the chief executive shall, in his or her annual budget request or by other appropriate means, request the legislative body to appropriate such amounts as shall be sufficient to fund the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement.
(b) If the state is a party to a collective bargaining agreement in which less than the requested amount is appropriated by the Legislature, the collective bargaining agreement shall be administered on the basis of the amounts appropriated by the Legislature. The failure of the Legislature to appropriate funds sufficient to fund the collective bargaining agreement shall not constitute, or be evidence of, any unfair labor practice. All collective bargaining agreements entered into by the state are subject to the appropriations powers of the Legislature, and the provisions of this section shall not conflict with the exclusive authority of the Legislature to appropriate funds.
(3) If any provision of a collective bargaining agreement is in conflict with any law, ordinance, rule, or regulation over which the chief executive officer has no amendatory power, the chief executive officer shall submit to the appropriate governmental body having amendatory power a proposed amendment to such law, ordinance, rule, or regulation. Unless and until such amendment is enacted or adopted and becomes effective, the conflicting provision of the collective bargaining agreement shall not become effective.
(4) If the agreement is not ratified by the public employer or is not approved by a majority vote of employees voting in the unit, in accordance with procedures adopted by the commission, the agreement shall be returned to the chief executive officer and the employee organization for further negotiations.
(5) Any collective bargaining agreement shall not provide for a term of existence of more than 3 years and shall contain all of the terms and conditions of employment of the employees in the bargaining unit during such term except those terms and conditions provided for in applicable merit and civil service rules and regulations.
For more information, check out http://perc.myflorida.com/pubs/Practical_Handbook.pdf
Congratulations to Paul G. Kirk,Jr, interim Senator from Massachusetts
Congratulations to former Democratic National Committee Chair Paul G. Kirk, Jr., upon his being named as interim Senator, replaccing Senator Kennedy until a by-election in January 2010.
Paul Kirk was counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees from COmmunism when I was interning for Senator Ted Kennedy. The Subommittee's focus was global, on the plight of refugees too often ignored by governments.
Paul Kirk was also Senator Kennedy's "political person," a shrewd, witty, scholarly guide to the ways of Washington and Massachusetts (whose father served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court).
Massachusetts Republicans are reportedly hell-bent suing to keep Paul Kirk from taking the oath of office as a temporary Senator tomorrow. How gauche.
I can almost hear Senator Ted Kennedy laughing at the effrontery of it all -- they want health care reform to fail in the Senate and they're willing to do anything to stop health care reform -- even going to court to keep Paul Kirk from becoming Senator for a couple of months.
NY Times (page one): Florida's U.S. Senator Bill Nelson Tries to Allay Fears on Health Overhaul
September 24, 2009
Senator Tries to Allay Fears on Health Overhaul
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — Senator Bill Nelson of Florida desperately wants to expand health insurance coverage because one in five Floridians is uninsured. As a former state insurance commissioner, he wants to crack down on insurers. And as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, he can shape legislation to achieve both goals.
But Mr. Nelson, a Democrat, has a big problem. The bill taken up this week by the committee would cut Medicare payments to insurance companies that care for more than 10 million older Americans, including nearly one million in Florida. The program, known as Medicare Advantage, is popular because it offers extra benefits, including vision and dental care and even, in some cases, membership in health clubs or fitness centers.
“It would be intolerable to ask senior citizens to give up substantial health benefits they are enjoying under Medicare,” said Mr. Nelson, who has been deluged with calls and complaints from constituents. “I am offering an amendment to shield seniors from those benefit cuts.”
Similar concerns exploded into public view on Wednesday as members of the Finance Committee slogged though a mammoth health care overhaul bill for a second day.
To help offset the cost of covering the uninsured, the Senate and House bills would squeeze roughly $400 billion to $500 billion out of the projected growth in Medicare over 10 years.
Republicans on Wednesday accused Democrats of using Medicare as a piggy bank to pay for coverage of the uninsured. Democrats countered by saying they were eliminating overpayments to insurance companies and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund, which could run out of money in 2017.
Senator Nelson said Republicans were waging a “scare campaign,” but he shares some of their concerns. His predicament highlights the political risks for Democrats eager to reassure older Americans who vote in large numbers.
There are risks for President Obama as well. He cannot afford to lose Mr. Nelson’s vote. White House officials have offered to work with him to address his concerns. Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that “if you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep it.”
The cost of Mr. Nelson’s proposed fix — to preserve benefits for many people enrolled in the private Medicare plans — could total $40 billion over 10 years, and that could also be a problem for the White House. Mr. Obama has promised not to sign a health bill that increases the deficit, and so far Mr. Nelson has not said precisely how he would pay for his amendment.
Approval of the amendment could invite other Democrats to ask for similar deals that might make the bill more palatable to their constituents, but more costly as well.
The legislation moving through Congress would make other huge changes in Medicare — raising premiums for some higher-income beneficiaries, cutting payments to hospitals and nursing homes, and trimming payments for many “overvalued services” provided by doctors. The legislation includes provisions to measure the quality of care provided by doctors and hospitals and to reward those who cure patients or keep them healthy.
“It’s disingenuous to say that Congress can cut this much spending from Medicare without having an adverse affect on seniors’ access to health care,” said Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. “Seniors should not foot the bill for the uninsured. Medicare should not be the piggy bank for new non-Medicare spending, a new entitlement.”
But the committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said no money would actually be taken out of the Medicare trust fund.
“It’s true that, under this legislation, there are savings in Medicare payments to providers,” Mr. Baucus said. “But the effect is to extend the life of the Medicare trust fund by four or five years. We are improving Medicare benefits, decreasing prescription drug costs for seniors and eliminating out-of-pocket costs for recommended preventive care.”
Mr. Nelson said he had received 56,000 telephone calls, letters and e-mail messages on the legislation since June.
Some of those callers have been mobilized by insurance companies.
Humana, one of the nation’s largest insurers, has urged subscribers to contact their members of Congress and register their opposition to the cuts. “Millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose many of the important benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable,” Humana said in a recent letter to beneficiaries.
On Monday, the Obama administration told Humana to “end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries.” It said the materials were “misleading and confusing.” Insurers have contracts with Medicare, and under Medicare rules, many of their communications with beneficiaries need to be submitted to the government for review, administration officials said.
The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the administration was trying to “squelch free speech” by Humana, which is based in Louisville. But Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, said Humana had “scared a lot of seniors unnecessarily.”
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent federal body, says payments to the private plans are, on average, 14 percent higher than what the government would spend for the same people in traditional Medicare.
Mr. Baucus’s bill would cut payments to Medicare Advantage plans by $123 billion over 10 years. Under a companion bill approved by three House committees, the cuts would total $156 billion. Mr. Obama proposed cuts totaling $175 billion. Insurers, he said, are getting “unwarranted subsidies” that “pad their profits but don’t improve the care of seniors.”
Mr. Baucus and House Democrats would save nearly $200 billion over 10 years by permanently reducing annual inflation adjustments in Medicare payments to hospitals and other providers. They would also cut special Medicare payments to hospitals serving large numbers of low-income people, on the assumption that more patients will have insurance.
Some of the Democrats’ other proposals have drawn fire from groups that support the overall push for a health care overhaul.
AARP, the lobby for older Americans, objects to the proposal that could increase premiums for some beneficiaries. In 2003, Congress stipulated that any Medicare beneficiaries with more than $80,000 of income would have to pay higher premiums. The income threshold rises with the Consumer Price Index.
Senator Baucus has proposed freezing the current income threshold for 10 years. That would raise $23 billion, as more people would have to pay the higher premiums.
David M. Certner, legislative counsel at AARP, said, “It’s unfair to single out seniors to pay more for their health benefits when other high-income people are not being asked to pay more.”
Throughout it all, Mr. Nelson said he would remember advice he once received from Claude Pepper, a Florida congressman and champion for the elderly: “Bill, I want you to look out for our seniors. Someone has to look out for them.”
Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
If Desalination is the "Solution," Then What is the Problem?
You define the problem and you can define the solution.
Instead of defining the problem as water waste and irrational exuberance by developers, the Florida Trend article (below) defines the "problem" as being a "water shortage" and defines the "solution" as promiscuous consumption of fossil or nuclear energy to take salt out of the oceans and pump de-salted ocean water around FLorida.
That defies logic.
When it comes to destroying Northeast FLorida's coasts, "just say whoa!"
Florida Trend Magazine: Salty Solution? (re: desalination)
Salty Solution?
By Cynthia Barnett - 5/1/2007
Holed up in Key West in 1861, the 500 Union soldiers who garrisoned Fort Taylor had a problem: A lack of fresh water. But from Europe came word of a new technology, and the Army decided to test something never before tried in the U.S. -- distilling fresh water from the sea. The Army ordered a "Marine Aerated Fresh Water Apparatus" from England and had the device shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean to New York, then down to the Keys. Fueled by wood and coal, the apparatus sucked in salt water, heated it in a giant boiler and sent it into towering pipes, where it evaporated and condensed, leaving behind salt and 7,000 gallons of fresh water a day.
The soldiers, however, found the machine so unwieldy that it ultimately proved easier to ship fresh water down from Tampa in barges, which is what Keys inhabitants did for much of the rest of the century.
Over time, cost became the biggest barrier to what's now called desalination -- the enormous amount of energy it required made it practical mostly for oil-rich, water-poor nations in the Middle East. But as desal technology evolved, Florida remained at the cutting edge. In the 1950s, University of Florida chemist Charles Reid set up a primitive "reverse-osmosis" membrane system that would become the basis for modern desalination technology. Since the early '80s, Florida communities have built more desal plants than any other state in the nation. Most are small plants that desalinate brackish water.
Then, in 1999, a regional water agency called Tampa Bay Water took the most ambitious step since the Union Army's transoceanic order: It decided to build the biggest seawater desalination plant in North America -- one that was supposed to deliver the cheapest desalinated water in the world. "We were trying to do something that no one in the Western Hemisphere had done on this scale," says Jerry Maxwell, general manager at Tampa Bay Water.
And, just as with the Aerated Fresh Water Apparatus of a century earlier, "it didn't work the way anyone wanted it to," Maxwell says.
Water wars
To understand why a board of locally elected leaders would risk more than $100 million of taxpayer money on an expensive technology untried in the U.S., you have to appreciate the intensity of the water wars fought by governments in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties from the 1970s through the '90s.
Pinellas County and St. Petersburg were the first places in Florida to exhaust their groundwater supplies. Their response was to buy land in sparsely populated northwest Hillsborough and central Pasco counties and build well fields from which they pumped water and piped it back to Pinellas.
That worked until the rural counties began to grow. As Pinellas increased pumping to meet its own growth, residents who settled in the rural countryside near the well fields complained of dropping lake levels, sinkholes and dried-up wells. For years, Pinellas, St. Petersburg and the area's water agencies -- the Southwest Florida Water Management District (known as Swiftmud) and the West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority -- insisted it was all just part of the hydrologic cycle and had nothing to do with groundwater pumping.
When water managers came to their senses and threatened to restrict pumping, Pinellas and St. Petersburg sued. The litigation dragged on for years. At one point, Pinellas even sued citizen activists whose wells had gone dry in Pasco. Over time, the lawyers alone cost taxpayers more than $10 million, "with not one new drop of water served to the public," observed former Swiftmud spokeswoman Honey Rand in her book "Water Wars."
Pinellas Commissioner Susan Latvala credits "divine intervention" for the eventual truce brokered by leaders including former Pinellas Commissioner Steve Seibert and former St. Pete Mayor David Fischer, who came into office about the same time. In 1998, officials in the three counties and St. Pete, Tampa and New Port Richey decided to stop competing for water resources and work together with Swiftmud to plan for new supplies and to conserve water.
The officials agreed to create a regional agency, Tampa Bay Water, to own and operate the region's water works. The agency, which charges its six member governments a uniform rate, is the largest water wholesaler in the Southeast, supplying 2.5 million people. As part of the deal, Swiftmud agreed to help the agency fund new supply as long as it met goals for weaning the region off groundwater, tapering from 192 million permitted gallons a day in 1998 to 90 million gallons by 2008.
Getting to desal
For years, Mark Farrell, an engineer who rose through Swiftmud's ranks during the water wars, had the task of responding to letters from retired Navy personnel in Tampa Bay and others who had seen desalination plants in the Mediterranean and Middle East and suggested the technology could help Tampa Bay.
By 1994, his pat response -- that cost and environmental concerns made desal impractical for Florida -- no longer made sense. Experience in the Middle East had shown that one way to hold down costs is to build desal plants next to coastal power plants, which already suck up and filter millions of gallons of seawater each day -- and which offer inexpensive electricity. Scientists at Florida Power balked at Farrell's request for a pilot desal project, but the late Roy Harrell, a St. Petersburg lawyer and longtime Swiftmud board member who helped end the water wars, made a personal appeal to Jack Critchfield, CEO of Florida Power's parent company.
Seeing promise and potential profit in desal, Critchfield paved the way for a research project, which focused on dealing with the ultra-salty concentrate that's a byproduct of desalination. The research was successful, and the water management district began pushing for desal as a "drought-proof" piece of the region's Master Water Plan. The district promised Tampa Bay Water $183 million from ad valorem taxes to help fund new water-supply infrastructure, including $85 million upon completion of a desal plant.
Maxwell, a longtime local government administrator recruited to Tampa from Tallahassee in 1995 to lead what would become Tampa Bay Water, was initially skeptical.
"If we're going to try to right a perceived wrong of 40 years of uncurtailed groundwater consumption," he says, "it wouldn't be sustainable to leap to something that would cause a greater problem."
Bidding
As it turned out, the problems that dogged the plant were not environmental. So much went wrong that almost every aspect of the process can be second-guessed, beginning with the fact that neither the water management district nor Tampa Bay Water had any experience with desalination and declined to hire anyone who did.
And while the project had more than its share of bad luck, critics say Tampa Bay Water set itself up for misfortune right from the start by letting price, environmental and legal issues take precedence over bidders' qualifications, financials and ability to deliver.
In 1997, with the water-management district's blessings and funding, Tampa Bay Water's board voted to issue a request for proposals for what would be by far the largest desalination plant in North America, producing 25 million gallons of fresh water a day.
Tampa Bay Water structured the request so that the winning bidder would design, build, own and operate the plant. The project required at least a 10% investment by the developer. Requiring that ownership stake was supposed to provide additional incentive to the developer to succeed, and also to minimize taxpayers' risk. The private contractor would be paid only if the plant worked.
Tampa Bay Water received just four bids -- a sign of how little experience existed a decade ago for building a major desal plant, at least in the U.S. regulatory environment. And the bids came in looking so different that they were impossible to compare: Between 1997 and 1998, Tampa Bay Water had to reissue its request for proposals a second and then a third time.
One early favorite was a team made up of Ionics Inc. and Progress Energy Corp. Ionics had global desal experience, and the team proposed to locate the plant at Progress Energy's Anclote River facility in Pasco County, where the water-management district had done its pilot tests a few years before.
But in each successive round of proposals, a joint venture between engineering giant Stone & Webster and Poseidon Resources Corp., neither of which had built a major desal plant, came in with lower and lower bids. Tampa Bay Water executives were clearly focused on price. In February 1999, they issued a press release, picked up around the globe, boasting that the four competing teams "have shattered price barriers for desalination plants worldwide."
"With one proposal's first-year costs as low as $1.71 per thousand gallons," Maxwell said in the release, "our Tampa Bay desalination facility will have the attention of other coastal communities and states as well as many foreign governments."
Few, however, believed anyone could desalinate 1,000 gallons of seawater for $1.71. "Everyone in the industry was saying, 'there's no way,' " remembers Farrell, who'd left the water management district and worked for one of the competing teams, a consortium of U.S. Water and E.I. duPont de Nemours. "All the teams saw that there was no money to be made on this project -- we were doing it for the marketing position, the cachet of being first and hopefully to get into other plants. But $1.71 was simply not do-able."
Believing that the design-build-own contract would insulate it from risk, Tampa Bay Water's board chose the Poseidon/Stone & Webster proposal in April 1999. The plant would be sited at Tampa Electric Co.'s Big Bend Power Station at Apollo Beach in southern Hillsborough County.
Building
Ken Herd, Tampa Bay Water's director of operations, says there was no way to anticipate what happened next: In May 2000, barely a year after it and Poseidon won the bid, Boston-based Stone & Webster, one of the world's largest and most respected engineering firms, declared bankruptcy. In December 2000, Poseidon hired New Jersey-based energy giant Covanta (which also had no desal experience) to take over construction. A year later, Covanta filed for bankruptcy after the energy crisis in California crippled its cash flow.
What some saw as bad luck or bad choices by Maxwell and Tampa Bay Water, Maxwell viewed as mismanagement by Poseidon. Now 63, with close-cropped white hair and a goatee to match, Maxwell has an easygoing management style that masks a determination to have things his way. Things wouldn't have gone so badly, he believed, if he'd had more control over the process.
Indeed, if there's one thing Maxwell didn't like about the contract, it was that it left too much control in the hands of the private contractor. In the wake of the bankruptcies in spring 2002, Maxwell persuaded Tampa Bay Water's board to buy the plant from Poseidon -- even though Poseidon insisted it was on track to complete it.
That decision left Maxwell in for heavy pummeling. Critics such as state Sen. Ronda Storms, a former board member and Hillsborough County commissioner who opposed buying the half-finished plant, say the move was about ego and control and put ratepayers at enormous risk. After the purchase, ratepayers -- not Poseidon -- were on the hook for cost overruns and other problems. And while it got rid of the solvent company, Tampa Bay Water stuck with the bankrupt company, Covanta, to finish the plant.
The board's position was that Tampa Bay Water's access to cheaper financing than the private companies would save taxpayers millions in bond fees as the plant was completed. Most important, the agency was ultimately responsible for making sure the region got the fresh water it needed. Poseidon had already jumped the most significant hurdle, environmental permitting. Maxwell and the board didn't expect that it would be hard to finish the plant.
On a spring day in 2003, the plant produced its first 3 million gallons of fresh water. Officials toasted each other with plastic cups. But their celebration was premature. The plant's key technology -- 10,000 reverse-osmosis membranes -- began to clog after a few weeks. The membranes, which cost $500 apiece, are supposed to last between five and seven years.
Under the original contract, Poseidon would have been responsible for fixing the membranes. Instead, the taxpayers were on the hook. Tampa Bay Water ultimately hired highly regarded American Water Pridesa (since acquired by Spain's Acciona Agua), which spent four years and $32 million on remediation.
Today, the plant looks very different from four years ago, when officials raised their plastic cups to toast what proved to be a misfire. Andy Shea, North American director for Acciona Agua, who was once with Poseidon, hints that the current firms won't make money on the plant either but are motivated by a sense of urgency in the global industry to get this plant online. "We're there to restore the luster originally envisioned for the Tampa Bay Saltwater Desalination Plant," Shea says.
Under the microscope
Housed in a nondescript complex of gray concrete buildings dwarfed by the Tampa Electric power plant and its smokestacks next door, Tampa Bay's saltwater desalination plant in March began to do what it is supposed to do. The American Water/Acciona Agua team had cranked up all seven of the plant's enormous reverse-osmosis "trains," banks of thousands of membranes that at full power sound like an airplane engine. For weeks, the plant has run at about 15 million gallons a day; the water has met all Safe Drinking Water Act Requirements. The all-crucial acceptance tests required in the contract should begin soon.
Estimated cost for the water, once promised at $1.71 per 1,000 gallons, has climbed to $3.19. That will fall to $2.88 when Swiftmud kicks in its $85 million -- which won't happen until district officials are sure the plant is running as it should.
Legal fees have mounted, too, to nearly $7 million -- a result of Tampa Bay Water's lawsuits against myriad insurance companies and engineering firms. At its April meeting, the board was to consider a settlement agreement in the consolidated suits. In years' worth of depositions and legal filings, Poseidon blamed exotic Asian green mussels and idiosyncrasies associated with the Tampa Electric site. Tampa Bay Water officials blamed the company for not understanding the complexity of the Bay and for building the original plant on the cheap.
The fallout extends to hopes that the Tampa plant would prove desal's promise. A decade ago, the plant was expected to jump-start a wave of ocean desal in America, particularly in the Sun Belt, where population growth and water scarcity have governments scurrying to build alternative water supplies. Instead, its troubles have likely delayed by five to 10 years what many predict will be an inevitable turn
toward desalination in America.
Herd, the operations manager whose youthful face belies his 20 years with Tampa Bay Water and its forerunner, is in demand around the country as other states, particularly Texas and California, look to learn from Tampa Bay's mistakes. "It's not just a national interest -- it's a worldwide viewing under a microscope," he says. "I can't imagine that there's been another public works project in our generation that's drawn this much interest."
The lessons Herd offers? "Require the contractor to have desalination experience," he says, without a touch of irony. Others, such as Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who serves on the water board today, warn against desal. "This is extraordinarily complex compared to other remedies such as reservoirs," Iorio says. "I would not recommend that another jurisdiction go down this road unless they have thoroughly exhausted all other remedies."
Indeed, Tampa Bay Water's experience provides a big lesson for other governments in Florida facing water wars like those that plagued Tampa Bay: Collaboration on conservation and regional water supply planning can lessen the need for expensive, high-tech solutions to water woes. As the plant's troubles dragged on, the utility built a 15-billion gallon reservoir and a 66-million-gallon-a-day surface water treatment plant and implemented an aggressive conservation component.
Tampa Bay Water managed, in fact, to reduce overall groundwater pumping in the region from 192 million to 121 million gallons a day despite population growth -- and without one drop of the desalinated water that officials once insisted they needed to meet that goal.
The Desal State
Marco Island on the southwest Florida coast, just six miles long and four miles wide, bustles with 40,000 residents and visitors during the winter. A reverse-osmosis plant provides the island's residents with 6 million gallons a day -- the water it filters is among the highest salinity water in the United States that ends up as tap water.
Among the 250 smaller-scale desal plants that filter and purify water around the nation, Florida has more than any other state, with 120 plants along both coasts. Texas has 38, and California, 33. Both of those states have significant plans for seawater desalination but are closely watching Tampa Bay's plant, the first large-scale desal plant in North America and the first to filter seawater.
Most of the Florida plants rely on reverse-osmosis filtration through membranes to remove salts, calcium and other substances from brackish water. They don't have to pretreat the brackish water as extensively as facilities that filter seawater -- one source of technical troubles that plagued the Tampa plant.
A couple of the largest include a 20-million-gallon-a-day plant in Collier County and an 18-mgd plant in Hollywood. A 40-mgd nanofiltration plant -- similar to reverse osmosis but removing slightly fewer ions -- recently went into service in Boca Raton and is the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1995, Sarasota County built a desal plant with a technology called electrodialysis reversal (EDR) that uses electricity to separate salt and other minerals. The largest EDR plant in the world, the Sarasota facility was designed to produce 20 million gallons a day.
"Perhaps you don't hear about these plants," says Steve Duranceau, an Orlando-based engineer who's helped design several of the Florida plants, "because they work so well."
Tampa "has really delayed seawater desalination projects in this country," he says, "but people have to realize that communities have been successfully desalting brackish water on the west and east coasts of Florida for 20 years."
Business: The Desalters
In 2005, South Korea engineering powerhouse Doosan built the Fujairah, one of the largest desalination plants in the world, in the United Arab Emirates. Last year, when Doosan decided to set up research and development subsidiaries on both sides of the globe to strengthen its desal capacity -- the company says it controls 40% of the worldwide market -- it chose Dubai and Tampa.
Doosan Hydro Technology is one of the first companies to make Florida a strategic base for tapping the seawater desalination market in the Sun Belt -- a market expected to boom when Tampa Bay's plant becomes fully operational. Florida, Texas and California all are considering major seawater desal efforts as an alternative source of fresh water to supply population growth.
Another company to watch is Boca Raton-based Water Standard Co., which has spent the past six years developing a Seawater Desalination Vessel and is heavily promoting its concept of ship-based mass desalination with the help of Tampa-based engineering firm PBS&J. Last fall, the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District in California voted to study the vessel as a possible source of fresh water for the region.
By Cynthia Barnett - 5/1/2007
Holed up in Key West in 1861, the 500 Union soldiers who garrisoned Fort Taylor had a problem: A lack of fresh water. But from Europe came word of a new technology, and the Army decided to test something never before tried in the U.S. -- distilling fresh water from the sea. The Army ordered a "Marine Aerated Fresh Water Apparatus" from England and had the device shipped across the
Atlantic Ocean to New York, then down to the Keys. Fueled by wood and coal, the apparatus sucked in salt water, heated it in a giant boiler and sent it into towering pipes, where it evaporated and condensed, leaving behind salt and 7,000 gallons of fresh water a day.
The soldiers, however, found the machine so unwieldy that it ultimately proved easier to ship fresh water down from Tampa in barges, which is what Keys inhabitants did for much of the rest of the century.
Over time, cost became the biggest barrier to what's now called desalination -- the enormous amount of energy it required made it practical mostly for oil-rich, water-poor nations in the Middle East. But as desal technology evolved, Florida remained at the cutting edge. In the 1950s, University of Florida chemist Charles Reid set up a primitive "reverse-osmosis" membrane system that would become the basis for modern desalination technology. Since the early '80s, Florida communities have built more desal plants than any other state in the nation. Most are small plants that desalinate brackish water.
Then, in 1999, a regional water agency called Tampa Bay Water took the most ambitious step since the Union Army's transoceanic order: It decided to build the biggest seawater desalination plant in North America -- one that was supposed to deliver the cheapest desalinated water in the world. "We were trying to do something that no one in the Western Hemisphere had done on this scale," says Jerry Maxwell, general manager at Tampa Bay Water.
And, just as with the Aerated Fresh Water Apparatus of a century earlier, "it didn't work the way anyone wanted it to," Maxwell says.
Water wars
To understand why a board of locally elected leaders would risk more than $100 million of taxpayer money on an expensive technology untried in the U.S., you have to appreciate the intensity of the water wars fought by governments in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties from the 1970s through the '90s.
Pinellas County and St. Petersburg were the first places in Florida to exhaust their groundwater supplies. Their response was to buy land in sparsely populated northwest Hillsborough and central Pasco counties and build well fields from which they pumped water and piped it back to Pinellas.
That worked until the rural counties began to grow. As Pinellas increased pumping to meet its own growth, residents who settled in the rural countryside near the well fields complained of dropping lake levels, sinkholes and dried-up wells. For years, Pinellas, St. Petersburg and the area's water agencies -- the Southwest Florida Water Management District (known as Swiftmud) and the West Coast Regional Water Supply Authority -- insisted it was all just part of the hydrologic cycle and had nothing to do with groundwater pumping.
When water managers came to their senses and threatened to restrict pumping, Pinellas and St. Petersburg sued. The litigation dragged on for years. At one point, Pinellas even sued citizen activists whose wells had gone dry in Pasco. Over time, the lawyers alone cost taxpayers more than $10 million, "with not one new drop of water served to the public," observed former Swiftmud spokeswoman Honey Rand in her book "Water Wars."
Pinellas Commissioner Susan Latvala credits "divine intervention" for the eventual truce brokered by leaders including former Pinellas Commissioner Steve Seibert and former St. Pete Mayor David Fischer, who came into office about the same time. In 1998, officials in the three counties and St. Pete, Tampa and New Port Richey decided to stop competing for water resources and work together with Swiftmud to plan for new supplies and to conserve water.
The officials agreed to create a regional agency, Tampa Bay Water, to own and operate the region's water works. The agency, which charges its six member governments a uniform rate, is the largest water wholesaler in the Southeast, supplying 2.5 million people. As part of the deal, Swiftmud agreed to help the agency fund new supply as long as it met goals for weaning the region off groundwater, tapering from 192 million permitted gallons a day in 1998 to 90 million gallons by 2008.
Getting to desal
For years, Mark Farrell, an engineer who rose through Swiftmud's ranks during the water wars, had the task of responding to letters from retired Navy personnel in Tampa Bay and others who had seen desalination plants in the Mediterranean and Middle East and suggested the technology could help Tampa Bay.
By 1994, his pat response -- that cost and environmental concerns made desal impractical for Florida -- no longer made sense. Experience in the Middle East had shown that one way to hold down costs is to build desal plants next to coastal power plants, which already suck up and filter millions of gallons of seawater each day -- and which offer inexpensive electricity. Scientists at Florida Power balked at Farrell's request for a pilot desal project, but the late Roy Harrell, a St. Petersburg lawyer and longtime Swiftmud board member who helped end the water wars, made a personal appeal to Jack Critchfield, CEO of Florida Power's parent company.
Seeing promise and potential profit in desal, Critchfield paved the way for a research project, which focused on dealing with the ultra-salty concentrate that's a byproduct of desalination. The research was successful, and the water management district began pushing for desal as a "drought-proof" piece of the region's Master Water Plan. The district promised Tampa Bay Water $183 million from ad valorem taxes to help fund new water-supply infrastructure, including $85 million upon completion of a desal plant.
Maxwell, a longtime local government administrator recruited to Tampa from Tallahassee in 1995 to lead what would become Tampa Bay Water, was initially skeptical.
"If we're going to try to right a perceived wrong of 40 years of uncurtailed groundwater consumption," he says, "it wouldn't be sustainable to leap to something that would cause a greater problem."
Bidding
As it turned out, the problems that dogged the plant were not environmental. So much went wrong that almost every aspect of the process can be second-guessed, beginning with the fact that neither the water management district nor Tampa Bay Water had any experience with desalination and declined to hire anyone who did.
And while the project had more than its share of bad luck, critics say Tampa Bay Water set itself up for misfortune right from the start by letting price, environmental and legal issues take precedence over bidders' qualifications, financials and ability to deliver.
In 1997, with the water-management district's blessings and funding, Tampa Bay Water's board voted to issue a request for proposals for what would be by far the largest desalination plant in North America, producing 25 million gallons of fresh water a day.
Tampa Bay Water structured the request so that the winning bidder would design, build, own and operate the plant. The project required at least a 10% investment by the developer. Requiring that ownership stake was supposed to provide additional incentive to the developer to succeed, and also to minimize taxpayers' risk. The private contractor would be paid only if the plant worked.
Tampa Bay Water received just four bids -- a sign of how little experience existed a decade ago for building a major desal plant, at least in the U.S. regulatory environment. And the bids came in looking so different that they were impossible to compare: Between 1997 and 1998, Tampa Bay Water had to reissue its request for proposals a second and then a third time.
One early favorite was a team made up of Ionics Inc. and Progress Energy Corp. Ionics had global desal experience, and the team proposed to locate the plant at Progress Energy's Anclote River facility in Pasco County, where the water-management district had done its pilot tests a few years before.
But in each successive round of proposals, a joint venture between engineering giant Stone & Webster and Poseidon Resources Corp., neither of which had built a major desal plant, came in with lower and lower bids. Tampa Bay Water executives were clearly focused on price. In February 1999, they issued a press release, picked up around the globe, boasting that the four competing teams "have shattered price barriers for desalination plants worldwide."
"With one proposal's first-year costs as low as $1.71 per thousand gallons," Maxwell said in the release, "our Tampa Bay desalination facility will have the attention of other coastal communities and states as well as many foreign governments."
Few, however, believed anyone could desalinate 1,000 gallons of seawater for $1.71. "Everyone in the industry was saying, 'there's no way,' " remembers Farrell, who'd left the water management district and worked for one of the competing teams, a consortium of U.S. Water and E.I. duPont de Nemours. "All the teams saw that there was no money to be made on this project -- we were doing it for the marketing position, the cachet of being first and hopefully to get into other plants. But $1.71 was simply not do-able."
Believing that the design-build-own contract would insulate it from risk, Tampa Bay Water's board chose the Poseidon/Stone & Webster proposal in April 1999. The plant would be sited at Tampa Electric Co.'s Big Bend Power Station at Apollo Beach in southern Hillsborough County.
Building
Ken Herd, Tampa Bay Water's director of operations, says there was no way to anticipate what happened next: In May 2000, barely a year after it and Poseidon won the bid, Boston-based Stone & Webster, one of the world's largest and most respected engineering firms, declared bankruptcy. In December 2000, Poseidon hired New Jersey-based energy giant Covanta (which also had no desal experience) to take over construction. A year later, Covanta filed for bankruptcy after the energy crisis in California crippled its cash flow.
What some saw as bad luck or bad choices by Maxwell and Tampa Bay Water, Maxwell viewed as mismanagement by Poseidon. Now 63, with close-cropped white hair and a goatee to match, Maxwell has an easygoing management style that masks a determination to have things his way. Things wouldn't have gone so badly, he believed, if he'd had more control over the process.
Indeed, if there's one thing Maxwell didn't like about the contract, it was that it left too much control in the hands of the private contractor. In the wake of the bankruptcies in spring 2002, Maxwell persuaded Tampa Bay Water's board to buy the plant from Poseidon -- even though Poseidon insisted it was on track to complete it.
That decision left Maxwell in for heavy pummeling. Critics such as state Sen. Ronda Storms, a former board member and Hillsborough County commissioner who opposed buying the half-finished plant, say the move was about ego and control and put ratepayers at enormous risk. After the purchase, ratepayers -- not Poseidon -- were on the hook for cost overruns and other problems. And while it got rid of the solvent company, Tampa Bay Water stuck with the bankrupt company, Covanta, to finish the plant.
The board's position was that Tampa Bay Water's access to cheaper financing than the private companies would save taxpayers millions in bond fees as the plant was completed. Most important, the agency was ultimately responsible for making sure the region got the fresh water it needed. Poseidon had already jumped the most significant hurdle, environmental permitting. Maxwell and the board didn't expect that it would be hard to finish the plant.
On a spring day in 2003, the plant produced its first 3 million gallons of fresh water. Officials toasted each other with plastic cups. But their celebration was premature. The plant's key technology -- 10,000 reverse-osmosis membranes -- began to clog after a few weeks. The membranes, which cost $500 apiece, are supposed to last between five and seven years.
Under the original contract, Poseidon would have been responsible for fixing the membranes. Instead, the taxpayers were on the hook. Tampa Bay Water ultimately hired highly regarded American Water Pridesa (since acquired by Spain's Acciona Agua), which spent four years and $32 million on remediation.
Today, the plant looks very different from four years ago, when officials raised their plastic cups to toast what proved to be a misfire. Andy Shea, North American director for Acciona Agua, who was once with Poseidon, hints that the current firms won't make money on the plant either but are motivated by a sense of urgency in the global industry to get this plant online. "We're there to restore the luster originally envisioned for the Tampa Bay Saltwater Desalination Plant," Shea says.
Under the microscope
Housed in a nondescript complex of gray concrete buildings dwarfed by the Tampa Electric power plant and its smokestacks next door, Tampa Bay's saltwater desalination plant in March began to do what it is supposed to do. The American Water/Acciona Agua team had cranked up all seven of the plant's enormous reverse-osmosis "trains," banks of thousands of membranes that at full power sound like an airplane engine. For weeks, the plant has run at about 15 million gallons a day; the water has met all Safe Drinking Water Act Requirements. The all-crucial acceptance tests required in the contract should begin soon.
Estimated cost for the water, once promised at $1.71 per 1,000 gallons, has climbed to $3.19. That will fall to $2.88 when Swiftmud kicks in its $85 million -- which won't happen until district officials are sure the plant is running as it should.
Legal fees have mounted, too, to nearly $7 million -- a result of Tampa Bay Water's lawsuits against myriad insurance companies and engineering firms. At its April meeting, the board was to consider a settlement agreement in the consolidated suits. In years' worth of depositions and legal filings, Poseidon blamed exotic Asian green mussels and idiosyncrasies associated with the Tampa Electric site. Tampa Bay Water officials blamed the company for not understanding the complexity of the Bay and for building the original plant on the cheap.
The fallout extends to hopes that the Tampa plant would prove desal's promise. A decade ago, the plant was expected to jump-start a wave of ocean desal in America, particularly in the Sun Belt, where population growth and water scarcity have governments scurrying to build alternative water supplies. Instead, its troubles have likely delayed by five to 10 years what many predict will be an inevitable turn
toward desalination in America.
Herd, the operations manager whose youthful face belies his 20 years with Tampa Bay Water and its forerunner, is in demand around the country as other states, particularly Texas and California, look to learn from Tampa Bay's mistakes. "It's not just a national interest -- it's a worldwide viewing under a microscope," he says. "I can't imagine that there's been another public works project in our generation that's drawn this much interest."
The lessons Herd offers? "Require the contractor to have desalination experience," he says, without a touch of irony. Others, such as Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who serves on the water board today, warn against desal. "This is extraordinarily complex compared to other remedies such as reservoirs," Iorio says. "I would not recommend that another jurisdiction go down this road unless they have thoroughly exhausted all other remedies."
Indeed, Tampa Bay Water's experience provides a big lesson for other governments in Florida facing water wars like those that plagued Tampa Bay: Collaboration on conservation and regional water supply planning can lessen the need for expensive, high-tech solutions to water woes. As the plant's troubles dragged on, the utility built a 15-billion gallon reservoir and a 66-million-gallon-a-day surface water treatment plant and implemented an aggressive conservation component.
Tampa Bay Water managed, in fact, to reduce overall groundwater pumping in the region from 192 million to 121 million gallons a day despite population growth -- and without one drop of the desalinated water that officials once insisted they needed to meet that goal.
The Desal State
Marco Island on the southwest Florida coast, just six miles long and four miles wide, bustles with 40,000 residents and visitors during the winter. A reverse-osmosis plant provides the island's residents with 6 million gallons a day -- the water it filters is among the highest salinity water in the United States that ends up as tap water.
Among the 250 smaller-scale desal plants that filter and purify water around the nation, Florida has more than any other state, with 120 plants along both coasts. Texas has 38, and California, 33. Both of those states have significant plans for seawater desalination but are closely watching Tampa Bay's plant, the first large-scale desal plant in North America and the first to filter seawater.
Most of the Florida plants rely on reverse-osmosis filtration through membranes to remove salts, calcium and other substances from brackish water. They don't have to pretreat the brackish water as extensively as facilities that filter seawater -- one source of technical troubles that plagued the Tampa plant.
A couple of the largest include a 20-million-gallon-a-day plant in Collier County and an 18-mgd plant in Hollywood. A 40-mgd nanofiltration plant -- similar to reverse osmosis but removing slightly fewer ions -- recently went into service in Boca Raton and is the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.
In 1995, Sarasota County built a desal plant with a technology called electrodialysis reversal (EDR) that uses electricity to separate salt and other minerals. The largest EDR plant in the world, the Sarasota facility was designed to produce 20 million gallons a day.
"Perhaps you don't hear about these plants," says Steve Duranceau, an Orlando-based engineer who's helped design several of the Florida plants, "because they work so well."
Tampa "has really delayed seawater desalination projects in this country," he says, "but people have to realize that communities have been successfully desalting brackish water on the west and east coasts of Florida for 20 years."
Business: The Desalters
In 2005, South Korea engineering powerhouse Doosan built the Fujairah, one of the largest desalination plants in the world, in the United Arab Emirates. Last year, when Doosan decided to set up research and development subsidiaries on both sides of the globe to strengthen its desal capacity -- the company says it controls 40% of the worldwide market -- it chose Dubai and Tampa.
Doosan Hydro Technology is one of the first companies to make Florida a strategic base for tapping the seawater desalination market in the Sun Belt -- a market expected to boom when Tampa Bay's plant becomes fully operational. Florida, Texas and California all are considering major seawater desal efforts as an alternative source of fresh water to supply population growth.
Another company to watch is Boca Raton-based Water Standard Co., which has spent the past six years developing a Seawater Desalination Vessel and is heavily promoting its concept of ship-based mass desalination with the help of Tampa-based engineering firm PBS&J. Last fall, the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District in California voted to study the vessel as a possible source of fresh water for the region.
Are Desalination Plants Are the 21st Century's Coal Slurry Pipelines?
Several times, the House of Representatives defeated legislation that would have encouraged coal slurry pipelines by granting them eminent domain. Some 1000 miles of water wasting, energy wasting and polluting coal pipelines would have tapped into the Madison Formation in Wyoming, wasting massive quantities of energy and polluting the environment in Arkansas to hexavalent chromium.
I wrote an 11,500 word article on coal pipelines, which was excerpted and reprinted in the Congressional Record. Farmers, ranchers, hunters, fishermen, small business people, environmentalists and conservationists defeated the pipeline interests.
Now we are faced with the possibility of a "water war," in which wasteful South FLorida special interests plug for desalination plants (not in their backyard, but in ours) hooked up to big pipes sending water to South Florida, ruining our area as SOuth Florida has already been ruined by bad planning.
My mother had a sign in her office for many years -- "Poor planning on your part does not necessarily create an emergency on my part."
North FLorida needs to tell South Florida (and Orlando) to srart conserving their water, instead of attempting to steal our water (like something out of the true-life experience of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the Owens Valley and elsewhere in California, dramatized by the movie, "Chinatown," with Jack Nicholson.
We've already seen what secretive planning by Walt Disney Company did to Orlando, as documented by Carl Hiassen in "Team Rodent -- How Disney Devours the World."
We don't need bad planning, energy waste and ugliness inflicted on our coasts here.
Thus the desalination plant requires the most intense public scrutiny, public picketing, and public protest -- we don't need to destroy our coast (and our chances of getting a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and National Scenic Coastal Parkway here).
Let 'em build a desalination plant in South Florida if they want, but not here.
DesalinationBiz:Marineland Desal Plant "could forever change the way future water supplies are developed in the State of Florida and across the USA"
Decision soon on Coquina Coast desalter study
Consultancy work on the Coquina Coast seawater desalination project by the City of Palm Coast, Florida, USA, which is lead negotiator for the project, is scheduled for approval at a council meeting on 16 December 2008.
At a workshop on 10 December 2008, Palm Coast city council members discussed a US$ 950,000 contract between the city and consulting firm Malcolm Pirnie for preliminary design work on the project on Florida's north-east coast.
Palm Coast is a member of the Coquina Coast Alternative Water Supply Project Seawater Desalination Committee, comprised of eleven cities, counties and other municipal entities. The committee is hiring Malcolm Pirnie and its partners, Sinclair Knight Merz and Veolia Water, to evaluate the alternatives of a land or a ship-based facility, and then preparing the preliminary design by February 2010.
As part of an effort to address future water demands in the Coquina Coast region, the committee endorsed an agreement to develop a regional water supply plan. Upon completion of that plan in 2007, it was determined that seawater desalination would be the most feasible alternative water supply project to pursue.
According to Malcolm Pirnie, this multi-year, multi-million dollar project has worldwide implications and could forever change the way future water supplies are developed in the State of Florida and across the USA.
While Palm Coast took the lead on negotiations with the consultants, the St Johns River Water Management District and six other local governments which form the cooperative group also are contributing to design costs. Five non-voting entities have paid out US$ 10,000 to be part of discussions.
Posted on 10 December 2008
Consultancy work on the Coquina Coast seawater desalination project by the City of Palm Coast, Florida, USA, which is lead negotiator for the project, is scheduled for approval at a council meeting on 16 December 2008.
At a workshop on 10 December 2008, Palm Coast city council members discussed a US$ 950,000 contract between the city and consulting firm Malcolm Pirnie for preliminary design work on the project on Florida's north-east coast.
Palm Coast is a member of the Coquina Coast Alternative Water Supply Project Seawater Desalination Committee, comprised of eleven cities, counties and other municipal entities. The committee is hiring Malcolm Pirnie and its partners, Sinclair Knight Merz and Veolia Water, to evaluate the alternatives of a land or a ship-based facility, and then preparing the preliminary design by February 2010.
As part of an effort to address future water demands in the Coquina Coast region, the committee endorsed an agreement to develop a regional water supply plan. Upon completion of that plan in 2007, it was determined that seawater desalination would be the most feasible alternative water supply project to pursue.
According to Malcolm Pirnie, this multi-year, multi-million dollar project has worldwide implications and could forever change the way future water supplies are developed in the State of Florida and across the USA.
While Palm Coast took the lead on negotiations with the consultants, the St Johns River Water Management District and six other local governments which form the cooperative group also are contributing to design costs. Five non-voting entities have paid out US$ 10,000 to be part of discussions.
Posted on 10 December 2008
Conserving NE FLorida's Water Is Better Than Building A "Technological Turkey"
Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Desalination plant under construction in Perth, Australia
A desalination plant outside desert areas is like a Rube Goldberg device we don't need -- an affectation, an energy-wasting device, a means of continuing the promiscuous, polluting waste of our water.
Preident Jimmy Carter said, "our energy problems have the same causes as our environmental prolems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation solves both problems at once."
It is now being hamhandedly bruited about (see below) that our area will have foisted upon it like an alien implant a brand-new desalination plant. Unless it were powered by solar or wind energy, it would require a powerplant burning fossil or nuclear energy.
Not so fast, St. Johns River Water Management District. Not so fast, "Water Authority of Volusia; Flagler, Marion and St. Johns counties; Dunes Community Development District; plus the cities of Palm Coast, DeLand, Mount Dora, Leesburg, Bunnell and Flagler Beach."
S. David Freeman, Jimmy Carter's Chairman of the U.S. Tennessee Valley AUthority, is an energy intellectual and a lawyer and was always quotable when I covered TVA meetings for the Appalachian Observer. I once asked him a question and he responded, "Ed, that's one of those have you stopped beating your wife yet" questions."
Freeman was dead-set against the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, which he called a "technological turkey." Congress killed the CRBRP. Freeman helped shut down several nuclear powerplants (at TVA and Sacramento and elsewhere) on the basis that conservation saves energy (and water) and is superior to capital-intensive projects that waste energy.
In my opinion, this desalination plant is a terribly dangerous idea. THere should be a referendum and public debate before the St. Johns River Water Management District, a few cities or any of the other special interests spend any more of our money on this pipedream.
It would mar our coastline with ugliness, either a giant plant at Marineland, or else a giant ship located just offshore. Not exactly what we need to make our area attractive to tourists. Not exactly what we need in the middle of a St. Augustine National Historical Park, National Seashore and Scenic Coastal Parfkway.
See the St. Augustine Record article by Peter Guinta below, "Desalination plant moves ahead == January report to say if $1.2B complex will be on land or offshore" and the articles appearing below it. Do your own research on desalination. Activate, energize and ask questions -- the coast we save is ours, and as Woody Guthrie sang, "this land is our land."
Desalination plant moves ahead == January report to say if $1.2B complex will be on land or offshore
PETER GUINTA
peter.guinta@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 09/24/09
MARINELAND -- Engineers and water experts planning the Coquina Coast Seawater Desalination Project said Wednesday night that their first report, due in January, will say whether the complex will be based on land or on a 900-foot ship offshore.
Five consultants working on this project held a panel discussion at Whitney Lab on Wednesday to discuss the progress made on the $1.2 billion plant, which probably will be built in Flagler County.
About 60 local residents attended.
Jerry Salsano, a consultant hired by St. Johns River Water Management District, said groundwater sources are nearing depletion due to growth, so alternative sources of water must be found.
"These can take eight to 10 years to come on line," he said. "Sources we've been using in this region for quite some time are not sustainable into the future. Florida's got 1,260 miles of coastline. It will look to the sea."
The partners in the project include the Water Authority of Volusia; Flagler, Marion and St. Johns counties; Dunes Community Development District; plus the cities of Palm Coast, DeLand, Mount Dora, Leesburg, Bunnell and Flagler Beach.
The district pledged $5 million toward construction and has been planning this since 2005.
The report determining what kind of plant, land or sea, ends the first phase. The second phase, testing and preliminary design, begins next year and ends 2013.
Final design and construction is scheduled from 2014 to 2017.
Salsano said that, if the plant isn't built, cities and counties would look toward the Ocklawaha and St. Johns rivers for water.
Consultant Ed Buchon said 6.7 billion gallons of desalinated water per day are used globally.
"There are ways to do this without impact to the environment," he said.
He added that to get the water to all the project members would involve 190 miles of pipe.
"That could be phased in over time," he said.
The question of whether the plant should be land or sea based may be decided on cost alone.
From a land-based plant, the cost would be $5.22 to $6.08 per 1,000 gallons. From the vessel, those prices would range from $9.03 to $9.14 per 1,000 gallons.
Jorge Aguilar, a member of Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C., consumer advocacy organization, said that desalination is very energy intensive and that only about 50 percent of the seawater taken into the plant is made into drinking water.
The rest remains in a brine solution that the plant would pump back into the ocean.
"You said they won't kill any fish, but there are microorganisms that are taken up, and a lot of marine life relies on those microorganisms," Aguilar said.
Buchon said the plant was not a "done deal," and that's why scientists and water experts were investigating these early phases.
"Some of the partners will know that at the end of Phase I they can opt out or stay in," he said.
The first desal plant was built in the Middle East in 1975 and there are 1,500 worldwide today.
Hal Wilkering of the district staff said that conservation can do a lot, and the district is implementing a $5 million plan, sharing the cost with utilities, to reduce landscape irrigation.
"But it's hard to predict what benefit we will get," he said. "How much water supplies we develop will depend in part how we do in conservation."
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© The St. Augustine Record
peter.guinta@staugustine.com
Publication Date: 09/24/09
MARINELAND -- Engineers and water experts planning the Coquina Coast Seawater Desalination Project said Wednesday night that their first report, due in January, will say whether the complex will be based on land or on a 900-foot ship offshore.
Five consultants working on this project held a panel discussion at Whitney Lab on Wednesday to discuss the progress made on the $1.2 billion plant, which probably will be built in Flagler County.
About 60 local residents attended.
Jerry Salsano, a consultant hired by St. Johns River Water Management District, said groundwater sources are nearing depletion due to growth, so alternative sources of water must be found.
"These can take eight to 10 years to come on line," he said. "Sources we've been using in this region for quite some time are not sustainable into the future. Florida's got 1,260 miles of coastline. It will look to the sea."
The partners in the project include the Water Authority of Volusia; Flagler, Marion and St. Johns counties; Dunes Community Development District; plus the cities of Palm Coast, DeLand, Mount Dora, Leesburg, Bunnell and Flagler Beach.
The district pledged $5 million toward construction and has been planning this since 2005.
The report determining what kind of plant, land or sea, ends the first phase. The second phase, testing and preliminary design, begins next year and ends 2013.
Final design and construction is scheduled from 2014 to 2017.
Salsano said that, if the plant isn't built, cities and counties would look toward the Ocklawaha and St. Johns rivers for water.
Consultant Ed Buchon said 6.7 billion gallons of desalinated water per day are used globally.
"There are ways to do this without impact to the environment," he said.
He added that to get the water to all the project members would involve 190 miles of pipe.
"That could be phased in over time," he said.
The question of whether the plant should be land or sea based may be decided on cost alone.
From a land-based plant, the cost would be $5.22 to $6.08 per 1,000 gallons. From the vessel, those prices would range from $9.03 to $9.14 per 1,000 gallons.
Jorge Aguilar, a member of Food and Water Watch, a Washington, D.C., consumer advocacy organization, said that desalination is very energy intensive and that only about 50 percent of the seawater taken into the plant is made into drinking water.
The rest remains in a brine solution that the plant would pump back into the ocean.
"You said they won't kill any fish, but there are microorganisms that are taken up, and a lot of marine life relies on those microorganisms," Aguilar said.
Buchon said the plant was not a "done deal," and that's why scientists and water experts were investigating these early phases.
"Some of the partners will know that at the end of Phase I they can opt out or stay in," he said.
The first desal plant was built in the Middle East in 1975 and there are 1,500 worldwide today.
Hal Wilkering of the district staff said that conservation can do a lot, and the district is implementing a $5 million plan, sharing the cost with utilities, to reduce landscape irrigation.
"But it's hard to predict what benefit we will get," he said. "How much water supplies we develop will depend in part how we do in conservation."
Click here to return to story:
http://www.staugustine.com/stories/092409/news_092409_025.shtml
© The St. Augustine Record
Florida Times-Union: Desalination: In our future, but no silver bullet for cure
Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Desalination plant under construction in Perth, Australia
By Deirdre Conner Story updated at 12:09 PM on Friday, Apr. 24, 2009 EMAIL PRINT
No longer the land of unlimited water, Florida is setting its sights on drinking from the sea.
With one desalination plant operating in Tampa Bay and another in the works for Flagler County, the practice of turning seawater into fresh drinking water is drawing increasing attention. And this week, the St. Johns River Water Management District declared that a desalination plant has an almost-certain future in Jacksonville, too.
The water we use to drink and water our lawns currently comes from an underground aquifer - that's the case in almost all parts of Florida. But levels in the aquifer are declining as utilities pump more and more to meet growing demand.
For that reason, Central Florida communities are looking to tap the St. Johns River as a water supply, enraging downstream communities in Northeast Florida.
The strategy of de-salting seawater is often mentioned as an alternative. But although ocean water is plentiful, transforming it to tap water it isn't easy.
High-cost procedure
Desalinating and treating seawater can cost triple or more what it costs to treat fresh groundwater. And desalination poses its own environmental threats, something acknowledged even by activists concerned about taking water from the St. Johns River.
Although the water management district's executive director, Kirby Green, said it's almost inevitable that Jacksonville will need a desalination plant in the next 20 years, managers at JEA don't appear to agree.
Karl Hankin, JEA's water/sewer system manager, said Tuesday the company will use all other options before considering desalination, including searching for brackish groundwater to pump and treat, and increasing the number of people who use reclaimed wastewater on their lawns.
Most wastewater in Jacksonville is dumped into the St. Johns River, unlike in other parts of the state where more wastewater is reused.
"The ones we're really counting on for sustainable water supply is reclaimed water use and conservation," Hankin said. "Those yield tremendous opportunity with the lowest cost."
JEA also is considering the possibility of running another pipe under the St. Johns River to tap wells in the north and west part of the county to move water to the more populated south and east parts of the region.
But some counties that already make heavy use of reclaimed water and have used up their available groundwater have found themselves forced to consider desalination.
With dwindling groundwater resources, Flagler County is one. Cost estimates showed it would be potentially less expensive than piping water from the St. Johns River, miles away from the rapidly growing coastal community of Palm Coast.
The Coquina Coast Desalination Plant is only in the very early planning phases but has attracted a lot of partners, including St. Johns County. It has a vote on the Coquina Coast board, and county tax dollars have helped fund a study that is examining whether the plant should be land- or ship-based.
St. Johns County's utility department has a water rate structure that encourages conservation and recently started pumping brackish groundwater - which must be treated through a reverse osmosis process - to supplement limited supplies of fresh groundwater.
"We're not in a dire situation, but we may need it to augment our current plan," said Bill Young, St. Johns County's utility director. "It makes sense to be at the table early on."
Environmentalists such as Carl Matthaei of St. Augustine want to see as much scrutiny of desalination as there has been on withdrawing river water. Desalination requires a lot of energy, which gives the plants a big carbon footprint, and discharges millions of gallons of a briny concentrate that some call toxic.
The Coquina Coast project has been open to public comment, Matthaei said, but he worries it could threaten endangered species such as right whales and sea turtles.
St. Johns Riverkeeper Neil Armingeon, who has led the fight to stop withdrawals from the St. Johns River, said people are frequently asking him: What about desalination?
"Everyone's always looking for the panacea," Armingeon said. "The issues that we clearly have to talk about in relationship with desal is energy cost and what to do with the discharge."
Before looking to the sea, Armingeon said, utilities should do more to conserve.
"Reducing consumption is the only way we're going to make it work," he said.
An example in Tampa Bay
Nearly everyone who's anyone in water planning appears to have toured the Tampa Bay Desalination Plant, which touts itself as the largest seawater desalination plant in North America and provider of close to 10 percent of the area's drinking water. The plant takes seawater first used to cool an adjacent power plant, then desalinates it.
It also has been in a fishbowl. The Tampa Bay plant has been part model, part cautionary tale for other water managers interested in desalination. First conceived in the 1990s, the project was plagued with financial problems and delays. It only went to continuous operation in 2007.
Today, even at full operation, it is producing between 16 million and 20 million gallons a day, below its 25-million- gallons-a-day capacity. Still, it's a needed relief for the area, which is experiencing a drought so severe that homeowners have been ordered to stop watering lawns and the local water authority is facing hefty fines for over-pumping groundwater wells.
Water managers there have said they are considering expanding the desalination plant or building another one in the next 10 years, said Chuck Carden, director of operation and facilities.
Supporters of the Coquina Coast proposal aren't scared off by Tampa Bay's experience.
"We hope to learn from their mistakes," Young said. "Desalination would just be one part of a water supply plan. We think we're doing a responsible thing."
deirdre.conner@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4504
Wikipedia: Desalination
Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Desalination plant under construction in Perth, Australia
Desalination
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Water desalination
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Methods
Distillation
Multi-stage flash distillation (MSF)
Multiple-effect evaporator (MED|ME)
Vapor-compression (VC)
Ion exchange
Membrane processes
Electrodialysis reversal (EDR)
Reverse osmosis (RO)
Nanofiltration (NF)
Membrane distillation (MD)
Freezing
Geothermal desalination
Solar humidification (HDH, MEH)
Methane hydrate crystallization
High grade water recycling
RF Induced Hyperthermia
Seawater greenhouse
This article is about removing salt from water. For soil desalination, see Soil salinity control.
Desalination, desalinization, or desalinisation refers to any of several processes that remove excess salt and other minerals from water. More generally, desalination may also refer to the removal of salts and minerals,[1] as in soil desalination.[2][3]
Water is desalinated in order to be converted to fresh water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. Sometimes the process produces table salt as a by-product. It is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in desalination is focused on developing cost-effective ways of providing fresh water for human use in regions where the availability of fresh water is limited.
Large-scale desalination typically uses extremely large amounts of energy as well as specialized, expensive infrastructure, making it very costly compared to the use of fresh water from rivers or groundwater. The large energy reserves of many Middle Eastern countries, along with their relative water scarcity, have led to extensive construction of desalination in this region. By mid-2007, Middle Eastern desalination accounted for close to 75% of total world capacity.[4]
The world's largest desalination plant is the Jebel Ali Desalination Plant (Phase 2) in the United Arab Emirates. It is a dual-purpose facility that uses multi-stage flash distillation and is capable of producing 300 million cubic meters of water per year.
The largest desalination plant in the United States is the one at Tampa Bay, Florida, which began desalinating 25 million gallons (US Gal.) (95000 m³) of water per day in December 2007.[5] The Tampa Bay plant runs at around 12% the output of the Jebel Ali Desalination Plants. A January 17, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal states, "World-wide, 13,080 desalination plants produce more than 12 billion gallons of water a day, according to the International Desalination Association."[6]
Schematic of a multi-stage flash desalinator
Plan of a typical reverse osmosis desalination plantContents [hide]
1 Methods
2 Considerations and criticism
2.1 Co-generation
2.2 Economics
2.3 Environmental
3 Desalination compared to other water supply options
4 Experimental techniques and other developments
4.1 LTTD Process
5 Existing facilities
5.1 Tampa Bay Water Desalination Project
5.2 El Paso (Texas) Desalination Plant
6 See also
7 References
7.1 Notes
7.2 Further reading
8 External links
[edit] Methods
As of July 2004, the leading method is Multi-stage flash distillation (85% of production world-wide).[7] The traditional process used in these operations is vacuum distillation—essentially the boiling of water at less than atmospheric pressure and thus a much lower temperature than normal. This is because the boiling of a liquid occurs when the vapor pressure equals the ambient pressure and vapor pressure increases with temperature. Thus, because of the reduced temperature, energy is saved.
In the last decade, membrane processes have developed very quickly, and most new facilities use reverse osmosis technology.[citation needed] Membrane processes use semi-permeable membranes and pressure to separate salts from water.[citation needed] Membrane systems typically use less energy than thermal distillation, which has led to a reduction in overall desalination costs over the past decade. Desalination remains energy intensive, however, and future costs will continue to depend on the price of both energy and desalination technology.[citation needed]
[edit] Considerations and criticism
[edit] Co-generation
Cogeneration is the process of using excess heat from power production to accomplish another task. In the sense of desalination, cogeneration is the production of potable water from seawater or brackish groundwater in an integrated, or "dual-purpose", facility in which a power plant is used as the source of energy for the desalination process. The facility’s energy production may be dedicated entirely to the production of potable water (a stand-alone facility), or excess energy may be produced and incorporated into the energy grid (a true cogeneration facility). There are various forms of cogeneration, and theoretically any form of energy production could be used. However, the majority of current and planned cogeneration desalination plants use either fossil fuels or nuclear power as their source of energy. Most plants are located in the Middle East or North Africa, due to their petroleum resources and subsidies. The advantage of dual-purpose facilities is that they can be more efficient in energy consumption, thus making desalination a more viable option for drinking water in areas of scarce water resources. [8][9]
Shevchenko BN350, the world's only nuclear-heated desalination unitIn a December 26, 2007 opinion column in the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nolan Hertel, a professor of nuclear and radiological engineering at Georgia Tech, wrote, "... nuclear reactors can be used... to produce large amounts of potable water. The process is already in use in a number of places around the world, from India to Japan and Russia. Eight nuclear reactors coupled to desalination plants are operating in Japan alone... nuclear desalination plants could be a source of large amounts of potable water transported by pipelines hundreds of miles inland..."[citation needed]
Additionally, the current trend in dual-purpose facilities is hybrid configurations, in which the permeate from an RO desalination component is mixed with distillate from thermal desalination. Basically, two or more desalination processes are combined along with power production. Such facilities have already been implemented in Saudi Arabia at Jeddah and Yambu-Medina.[10]
A typical aircraft carrier in the U.S. military uses nuclear power to desalinate 400,000 gallons (US Gal.) or 1514 m³ of water per day. [11]
[edit] Economics
A number of factors determine the capital and operating costs for desalination: capacity and type of facility, location, feed water, labor, energy, financing and concentrate disposal. Desalination stills now control pressure, temperature and brine concentrations to optimize the water extraction efficiency. Nuclear-powered desalination might be economical on a large scale. [12]
But, critics will point to the high costs of desalination technologies, especially for developing countries, the impracticability and cost of transporting or piping massive amounts of desalinated seawater throughout the interiors of large countries, and the byproduct of concentrated seawater, which some environmentalists have claimed "is a major cause of marine pollution when dumped back into the oceans at high temperatures"[13]
While noting that costs are falling, and generally positive about the technology for affluent areas that are proximate to oceans, one study argues that "Desalinated water may be a solution for some water-stress regions, but not for places that are poor, deep in the interior of a continent, or at high elevation. Unfortunately, that includes some of the places with biggest water problems." and "Indeed, one needs to lift the water by 2000 m, or transport it over more than 1600 km to get transport costs equal to the desalination costs. Thus, it may be more economical to transport fresh water from somewhere else than to desalinate it. In places far from the sea, like New Delhi, or in high places, like Mexico City, high transport costs would add to the high desalination costs. Desalinated water is also expensive in places that are both somewhat far from the sea and somewhat high, such as Riyadh and Harare. In many places, the dominant cost is desalination, not transport; the process would therefore be relatively less expensive in places like Beijing, Bangkok, Zaragoza, Phoenix, and, of course, coastal cities like Tripoli."[14] After being desalinized at Jubail, Saudi Arabia, water is pumped 200 miles (320 km) inland though a pipeline to the capital city of Riyadh. [15] For cities on the coast, desalination is being increasingly viewed as an untapped and unlimited water source.
Nevertheless, desalination does not take into account recycling water and broken infrastructure.[citation needed] Water is reused in Fountain Valley, CA, Fairfax, VA, El Paso, TX and Scottsdale, AZ. This process is an alternative to desalination that requires 50% less energy due to the significantly lower salt content and produces new water at 30% less cost to the consumer than desalinated sea water without the damage to marine life and ecosystems common to desalination plants.[citation needed]
Israel is now desalinating water at a cost of US$0.53 per cubic meter.[16] Singapore is desalinating water for US$0.49 per cubic meter.[17] Many large coastal cities in developed countries are considering the feasibility of seawater desalination, due to its cost effectiveness compared with other water supply options, which can include mandatory installation of rainwater tanks or stormwater harvesting infrastructure. Studies[citation needed] have shown that the desalination option is more cost-effective than large-scale recycled water for drinking, and more cost-effective in Sydney than the vastly expensive option of mandatory installation of rainwater tanks or stormwater harvesting infrastructure. The city of Perth has been successfully[citation needed] operating a reverse osmosis seawater desalination plant since 2006, and the Western Australia government have announced that a second plant will be built to service the city's needs. A desalination plant is being built in Australia's largest city, Sydney, and at Wonthaggi, Victoria in the near future.[18]
The Perth desalination plant is powered partially by renewable energy from the Emu Downs Wind Farm[19]. The Sydney plant will be powered entirely from renewable sources[20], thereby eliminating harmful greenhouse gas emissions to the environment, a common argument used against seawater desalination due to the energy requirements of the technology. The purchase or production of renewable energy to power desalination plants naturally adds to the capital and/or operating costs of desalination. However, recent experience in Perth and Sydney indicates that the additional cost is acceptable to communities, as a city may then augment its water supply without doing environmental harm to the atmosphere. The Queensland state government recently announced that the Gold Coast desalination plant will be powered entirely from renewable sources, bringing its environmental footprint down, in line with the other major plants that will be operating around the same time, in Perth and Sydney.
In December 2007 the South Australian Government announced that it would build a seawater desalination plant for the city of Adelaide, Australia located at Port Stanvac. The desalination plant is to be funded by raising water rates to achieve full cost recovery. [1] [2] An online, unscientific poll showed that nearly 60% of votes cast were in favor of raising water rates to pay for desalination. [3]
A January 17, 2008 article in the Wall. St. Journal states, "In November, Connecticut-based Poseidon Resources Corp. won a key regulatory approval to build a [US]$300 million water-desalination plant in Carlsbad, north of San Diego. The facility would be the largest in the Western Hemisphere, producing 50 million [U.S.] gallons [190,000 m³] of drinking water a day, enough to supply about 100,000 homes... Improved technology has cut the cost of desalination in half in the past decade, making it more competitive... Poseidon plans to sell the water for about [US]$950 per acre-foot [1200 m³]. That compares with an average [US]$700 an acre-foot [1200 m³] that local agencies now pay for water." [4] $1,000 per acre-foot works out to $3.06 for 1,000 gallons, which is the unit of water measurement that residential water users are accustomed to being billed in. [5].
While this regulatory hurdle was met, Poseidon Resources is not able to break ground until the final approval of a mitigation project for the damage done to marine life through the intake pipe, as is required by California law. Poseidon Resources has made progress in Carlsbad, CA despite its unsuccessful attempt to complete construction of Tampa Bay Desal, a desalination plant in Tampa Bay, FL in 2001. The Board of Directors of Tampa Bay Water were forced to buy Tampa Bay Desal from Poseidon Resources in 2001 to prevent a third failure of the project. Tampa Bay Water faced with 5 years of engineering problems and operation at 20% capacity due to marine life and growth captured and stuck to reverse osmosis filters prior to fully utilizing this facility in 2007. [21]
According to a May 9, 2008 article in Forbes, a San Leandro, California company called Energy Recovery Inc. has been desalinizing water for US$0.46 per cubic meter. [22]
According to a June 5, 2008 article in Globe and Mail, a Jordanian born chemical engineering Ph.D. student at the University of Ottawa named Mohammed Rasool Qtaisha has invented a new desalination technology that is alleged to be between 600% and 700% more efficient than current technology. According to the article, General Electric is looking into similar technology, and the U.S. National Science Foundation announced a grant to the University of Michigan to study it as well. Because the patents were still being worked out, the article was very vague about the details of this alleged technology. [23]
[edit] Environmental
One of the main environmental considerations of ocean water desalination plants is the impact of the open ocean water intakes[citation needed], especially when co-located with power plants. Many proposed ocean desalination plants initial plans relied on these intakes despite perpetuating ongoing impacts on marine life[citation needed]. In the United States, due to a recent court ruling under the Clean Water Act these intakes are no longer viable without reducing mortality, by ninety percent, of the life in the ocean; the plankton, fish eggs and fish larvae.[24] There are alternatives including beach wells that eliminate this concern, but require more energy and higher costs while limiting output.[25] Other environmental concerns include air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the power plants that provide electricity and/or thermal energy to the desalination plants.
Regardless of the method used, there is always a highly concentrated waste product consisting of everything that was removed from the created fresh water. This is sometimes referred to as brine, which is also a common term for the byproduct of recycled water schemes that is often disposed of in the ocean. These concentrates are classified by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as industrial wastes. With coastal facilities, it may be possible to return it to the sea without harm if this concentrate does not exceed the normal ocean salinity gradients to which osmoregulators are accustomed. Reverse osmosis, for instance, may require the disposal of waste water with salinity twice that of normal seawater. The benthic community cannot accommodate such an extreme change in salinity and many filter-feeding animals would be destroyed when the water is returned to the ocean. This presents an increasing problem further inland, where one needs to avoid ruining existing fresh water supplies such as ponds, rivers and aquifers. As such, proper disposal of concentrate needs to be investigated during the design phases.
To limit the environmental impact of returning the brine to the ocean, it can be diluted with another stream of water entering the ocean, such as the outfall of a waste water treatment plant or power plant. While seawater power plant cooling water outfalls are not freshwater like waste water treatment plant outfalls, the salinity of the brine will still be reduced. If the power plant is medium to large sized and the desalination plant is not enormous, the flow of the power plant's cooling water is likely to be at least several times larger than that of the desalination plant. Another method to reduce the increase in salinity is to spread the brine over a very large area so that there is only a slight increase in salinity. For example, once the pipeline containing the brine reaches the sea floor, it can split off into many branches, each one releasing the brine gradually along its length through small holes. This method can be used in combination with the joining of the brine with power plant or waste water plant outfalls.
The concentrated seawater has the potential to harm ecosystems, especially marine environments in regions with low turbidity and high evaporation that already have elevated salinity. Examples of such locations are the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and, in particular, coral lagoons of atolls and other tropical islands around the world[citation needed]. Because the brine is denser than the surrounding sea water due to the higher solute concentration, discharge into water bodies means that the ecosystems on the bed of the water body are most at risk because the brine sinks and remains there long enough to damage the ecosystems. Careful re-introduction can minimize this problem[citation needed]. For example, for the desalination plant and ocean outlet structures to be built in Sydney from late 2007, the water authority states that the ocean outlets will be placed in locations at the seabed that will maximize the dispersal of the concentrated seawater, such that it will be indistinguishable from normal seawater between 50 meters and 75 meters from the outlet points. Sydney is fortunate to have typical oceanographic conditions off the coast that allow for such rapid dilution of the concentrated byproduct, thereby minimizing harm to the environment.
In Perth, Australia, in 2007, the Kwinana Desalination Plant was opened. The water is sucked in from the ocean at only 0.1 meter per second, which is slow enough to let fish escape. The plant provides nearly 140,000 m³ of clean water per day. [6]
[edit] Desalination compared to other water supply options
Increased water conservation and water use efficiency remain the most cost effective priority for supplying water.[26] While comparing ocean water desalination to waste water reclamation for drinking water shows desalination as the first option, using reclamation for irrigation and industrial use provides multiple benefits.[27] Urban runoff and storm water capture also provide multiple benefits in treating, restoring and recharging groundwater.[28] An emerging alternative to desalinization in the State of California and other areas in the American southwest is the commercial importation of bulk water either by very large crude carriers converted to water carriers or pipelines. The idea is presently politically unpopular in Canada where governments have been scrambling to impose trade barriers to bulk water exports as a result of a claim filed in 1999 under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by Sun Belt Water Inc. a company established in 1990 in Santa Barbara, California, to address pressing local needs due to a severe drought in that area. Sun Belt maintains a web site where documents relating to the dispute are posted online at Company website.
[edit] Experimental techniques and other developments
In the past many novel desalination techniques have been researched with varying degrees of success. Some, such as Forward osmosis are still on the drawing board now while others have attracted research funding. For example, to offset the energy requirements of desalination, the U.S. Government is working to develop practical solar desalination.
As an example of newer theoretical approaches for desalination, focusing specifically on maximizing energy efficiency and cost effectiveness, Passarell Process may be considered[citation needed].
Other approaches involve the use of geothermal energy. From an environmental and economic point of view, in most locations geothermal desalination can be preferable to using fossil groundwater or surface water for human needs, as in many regions the available surface and groundwater resources already have long been under severe stress.
Recent research in the U.S. indicates that nanotube membranes may prove to be extremely effective for water filtration and may produce a viable water desalination process that would require substantially less energy than reverse osmosis.[29]
On June 23, 2008 it was reported that Siemens Water Technologies had developed a new technology that desalinizes one cubic meter of water while using only 1.5 kWh of energy, which, according to the report, is one half the energy that other processes use. [30]
According to MSNBC, a report by Lux Research estimated that the worldwide desalinated water supply will triple between 2008 and 2020. [31]
[edit] LTTD Process
LTTD is 'Low Temperature Thermal Desalination' uses low pressures inside chambers created by vacuum pumps and the principle that water boils at low pressures, even at ambient temperature. To cool the water vapors, cold sea water located 600 metres below the sea level is pumped through coils to condense the water vapors and then collect the pure water into storage tanks. The temperature of ocean water declines with an increase in depth, the water on surface of sea water is hot and water down below 600 metres is much cooler. The NIOT, India was able to successfully commission a 1000m3/day capacity floating barge based desalination plant off the coast of Chennai. It is also possible to use the LTTD process for power plants where huge amounts of warm water are discharged continuously from the plant. An experimental plant is being set up at Chennai Thermal Power Station.
References:
LTTD Plant, Chennai
Mobile Desalination plant, India
Floating plant, India
NIOT, India
[edit] Existing facilities
[edit] Tampa Bay Water Desalination Project
The Tampa Bay Water Desalination project was originally a private venture led by Poseidon Resources. This project was delayed by the bankruptcy of Poseidon Resources successive partners in the venture, Stone & Webster, then Covanta (formerly Ogden) and its principal subcontractor Hydranautics. Poseidon's relationship with Stone & Webster through S & W Water LLC ended in June 2000 when Stone & Webster declared bankruptcy and Poseidon Resources purchased Stone & Webster's stake in S & W Water LLC. Poseidon Resources partnered with Covanta and Hydranautics in 2001, changing the consortium name to Tampa Bay Desal. Through the inability of Covanta to complete construction bonding of the project, the Tampa Bay Water agency was forced to purchase the project from Poseidon on May 15, 2002 and underwrite the project financing under its own credit rating. Tampa Bay Water then contracted with Covanta Tampa Construction, who produced a project that did not meet required performance tests, and Covanta Tampa Construction filed bankruptcy in October 2003 to prevent losing the contract with Tampa Bay Water, which resulted in nearly 6 months of litigation between Covanta Tampa Construction and Tampa Bay Water. The plant was not fully operational until 2007. [21]
The Island of Aruba has the worlds 3rd largest desalination plant.[32]
[edit] El Paso (Texas) Desalination Plant
Brackish groundwater has been treated at the El Paso Plant since around 2004. Producing 27.5 million gallons of fresh water daily (about 25% of total freshwater deliveries) by reverse osmosis, it is a crucial contribution to water supplies in this water-stressed city. [33]
[edit] See also
Salinity control
Soil salinity
Soil desalination model
Soil salinity and groundwater model
[edit] References
[edit] Notes
^ "Desalination" (definition), The American Heritage Science Dictionary, Houghton Mifflin Company, via dictionary.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
^ "Australia Aids China In Water Management Project." People's Daily Online, 2001-08-03, via english.people.com.cn. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
^ There exist a new solution with the HelioTech products. HelioTech company ltd. Takashi, Kume, Amaya Takao, and Mitsuno Tooru. "The Effect of Soil Desalinization in the Hetao Irrigation District, Inner Mongolia, China." Transactions of the Japanese Society of Irrigation, Drainage and Reclamation Engineering, No. 223, pp. 133-139, 2003, abstract via sciencelinks.jp. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
^ Fischetti, Mark (September 2007), "Fresh from the Sea", Scientific American (Scientific American, Inc.) 297 (3): 118–119, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fresh-from-the-sea, retrieved 2008-08-03 Note: only the first two paragraphs are available on-line for no charge.
^ Applause, At Last, For Desalination Plant, The Tampa Tribune, December 22, 2007
^ Kathryn Kranhold, Water, Water, Everywhere..., The Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2008
^ Source: water-technology.net
^ Hamed, Osman A. (2005). “Overview of hybrid desalination systems – current status and future prospects.” Desalination, 186, 207-214.
^ Misra, B.M., J. Kupitz. (2004). “The role of nuclear desalination in meeting potable water needs in water scarce areas in the next decades.” Desalination, 166, 1-9.
^ Ludwig, Heinz. (2004). “Hybrid systems in seawater desalination – practical design aspects, present status and development perspectives.” Desalination, 164, 1-18.
^ How Aircraft Carriers Work
^ "Nuclear Desalination: UIC Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper #74," Uranium Information Centre Ltd., Melbourne, Australia, October 2006. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
^ Barlow, Maude, and Tony Clarke, "Who Owns Water?" The Nation, 2002-09-02, via thenation.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
^ Zhoua, Yuan, and Richard S.J. Tolb. "Evaluating the costs of desalination and water transport." (Working paper). Via a Hamburg University website. 2004-12-09. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
^ Desalination is the Solution to Water Shortages, redOrbit, May 2, 2008
^ Sitbon, Shirli. "French-run water plant launched in Israel," European Jewish Press, via ejpress.org, 2005-12-28. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
^ "Black & Veatch-Designed Desalination Plant Wins Global Water Distinction," (Press release). Black & Veatch Ltd., via edie.net, 2006-05-04. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
^ "Sydney desalination plant to double in size," ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), via abc.net.au, 2007-06-25. Retrieved on 2007-08-20.
^ Australia Turns to Desalination by Michael Sullivan and PX Pressure Exchanger energy recovery devices from Energy Recovery Inc. An Environmentally Green Plant Design. Morning Edition, National Public Radio, June 18, 2007
^ Fact sheets
^ a b http://www.tampabaywater.org/watersupply/tbdesalhistory.aspx
^ Hydro-Alchemy, Forbes, May 9, 2008
^ Ottawa student may hold secret to Water For All, Globe and Mail, June 5, 2008
^ http://www.desalresponsegroup.org/files/RiverkeepervEPA1-25-07_decision.pdf
^ untitled
^ Gleick, Peter H., Dana Haasz, Christine Henges-Jeck, Veena Srinivasan, Gary Wolff, Katherine Kao Cushing, and Amardip Mann. (November 2003.) "Waste not, want not: The potential for urban water conservation in California." (Website). Pacific Institute. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
^ Cooley, Heather, Peter H. Gleick, and Gary Wolff. (June 2006.) "Desalination, With a Grain of Salt – A California Perspective." (Website). Pacific Institute. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
^ Gleick, Peter H., Heather Cooley, David Groves. (September 2005.) "California water 2030: An efficient future." (Website). Pacific Institute. Retrieved on 2007-09-20.
^ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Public Affairs (2006-05-18). "Nanotube membranes offer possibility of cheaper desalination". Press release. http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_releases/2006/NR-06-05-06.html. Retrieved 2007-09-07.
^ Team wins $4m grant for breakthrough technology in seawater desalination, The Straits Times, June 23, 2008
^ A Rising Tide for New Desalinated Water Technologies, MSNBC, March. 17, 2009
^ http://www.aruba.com/news/general-news/aruba-hosts-international-desalination-conference-2007/
^ http://www.epwu.org/water/desal_info.html
[edit] Further reading
Committee on Advancing Desalination Technology, National Research Council. (2008). Desalination: A National Perspective. National Academies Press.
[edit] External links
GeoNoria Solar Desalination Process
National Academies Press | Desalination: A National Perspective
World Wildlife Fund | Desalination: option or distraction?
International Desalination Association
Desalination & Water Reuse - Official magazine of the International Desalination Association
European Desalination Society
IAEA - Nuclear Desalination
DME - German Desalination Society
Large scale desalination of sea water using solar energy
"Desalination Journal" and Desalination Directory of the European Desalination Society
Desalination by humidification and dehumidification of air: state of the art
Zonnewater - optimized solar thermal desalination (distillation)
SOLAR TOWER Project - Clean Electricity Generation for Desalination.
Solar Desalination using the MEH-Method
Article: Water issues prompt new look at desalination
Sun Belt Water Inc. Company website
Desalination bibliography Library of Congress
Water-Technology
Cheap Drinking Water from the Ocean - Carbon nanotube-based membranes will dramatically cut the cost of desalination
Water Desalination Free pdf book
Tampa Bay Water Seawater Desalination Reverse Osmosis Desalination Plant on Tampa Bay
Solar thermal-driven desalination plants based on membrane distillation
Encyclopedia of Water Sciences, Engineering and Technology Resources
wind-powered desalinization plant in Perth, Australia, is an example of how technology is insulating rich countries from impacts of climate change, while poor countries remain particularly vulnerable.
The Desal Response Group
Encyclopedia of Desalination and water and Water Resources
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination"
Pablo Paster: My city wants to put in a desalination plant for drinking water. Environmentalists are opposed.... What's so bad abo
Dear Pablo:
My city wants to put in a desalination plant for drinking water. Environmentalists are opposed, which makes me wonder: What's so bad about desalination?
Desalination is any process whereby salt and/or minerals are removed from water to make it potable. In most cases desalination is used in arid coastal regions to turn sea water into drinking water but it is also used inland, where local ground or surface water is brackish. The main area in the US for desalination include Southern California, the Gulf Coast and Florida but about 75% of the world's desalination capacity is located in the Middle East.
How Does Desalination Work?
Two main processes are used to desalinate water; membrane filtration and distillation. Membrane filtration is gaining popularity and includes reverse osmosis (RO) filtration. Because RO requires forcing the sea water through progressively smaller membranes it also requires a lot of energy for pumping. The other method, distillation, which currently accounts for 85% of global distillation capacity, uses heat to evaporate and condense water, leaving salt and minerals behind. This process obviously requires a lot of heat energy, but generating a vacuum in the distillation chamber can lower the boiling point of water and increase efficiency.
So What's The Problem With Desalination
It's obvious that the massive amounts of energy used in desalination contribute to climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions, possibly exacerbating the local drought conditions that require use of desalination in the first place. There are additional issues with the incoming and outgoing (waste) water. Inlet water from the ocean often contains fish and other sea life and passing through the desalination plant kills these organisms. Slowing the speed of the inlet water by using larger pipes can allow fish to escape by simply swimming back out.
On the outlet side the effluent of desalination plants is a brine that is far too salty for the marine life that it comes into contact with. Some desalination plants create sea salt for additional revenue, eliminating the need for any effluent. Another solution is to dilute the brine with the cooling water of a nearby power plant, or just with ocean water.
Are There Renewable Distillation Technologies?
Aside from the obvious use of solar photovoltaic or wind-generated electricity desalination can use waste heat from a nearby power plant or solar energy can be used directly in solar distillation. Similar to a solar still that you might use in an emergency survival situation in the desert or on a life raft, solar distillation uses the suns energy to evaporate water and then condense it. The drawback of this technology is that it yields relatively little fresh water and requires a large area. On a small scale a solar still is very effective but it isn't feasible for supplying water to a city or for irrigation of fields.
As with energy, the cheapest form of drinking water is water that is conserved. For a fraction of the cost of building and operating a desalination plant a community can support and fund water conservation efforts. These can include assistance with drought resistant landscaping, incentives for the removal of lawns, free replacement shower heads and subsidized replacement of water-using appliances, allowing and encouraging the use of graywater, and progressive water rates that punish heavy users.
Additional Articles
My city wants to put in a desalination plant for drinking water. Environmentalists are opposed, which makes me wonder: What's so bad about desalination?
Desalination is any process whereby salt and/or minerals are removed from water to make it potable. In most cases desalination is used in arid coastal regions to turn sea water into drinking water but it is also used inland, where local ground or surface water is brackish. The main area in the US for desalination include Southern California, the Gulf Coast and Florida but about 75% of the world's desalination capacity is located in the Middle East.
How Does Desalination Work?
Two main processes are used to desalinate water; membrane filtration and distillation. Membrane filtration is gaining popularity and includes reverse osmosis (RO) filtration. Because RO requires forcing the sea water through progressively smaller membranes it also requires a lot of energy for pumping. The other method, distillation, which currently accounts for 85% of global distillation capacity, uses heat to evaporate and condense water, leaving salt and minerals behind. This process obviously requires a lot of heat energy, but generating a vacuum in the distillation chamber can lower the boiling point of water and increase efficiency.
So What's The Problem With Desalination
It's obvious that the massive amounts of energy used in desalination contribute to climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions, possibly exacerbating the local drought conditions that require use of desalination in the first place. There are additional issues with the incoming and outgoing (waste) water. Inlet water from the ocean often contains fish and other sea life and passing through the desalination plant kills these organisms. Slowing the speed of the inlet water by using larger pipes can allow fish to escape by simply swimming back out.
On the outlet side the effluent of desalination plants is a brine that is far too salty for the marine life that it comes into contact with. Some desalination plants create sea salt for additional revenue, eliminating the need for any effluent. Another solution is to dilute the brine with the cooling water of a nearby power plant, or just with ocean water.
Are There Renewable Distillation Technologies?
Aside from the obvious use of solar photovoltaic or wind-generated electricity desalination can use waste heat from a nearby power plant or solar energy can be used directly in solar distillation. Similar to a solar still that you might use in an emergency survival situation in the desert or on a life raft, solar distillation uses the suns energy to evaporate water and then condense it. The drawback of this technology is that it yields relatively little fresh water and requires a large area. On a small scale a solar still is very effective but it isn't feasible for supplying water to a city or for irrigation of fields.
As with energy, the cheapest form of drinking water is water that is conserved. For a fraction of the cost of building and operating a desalination plant a community can support and fund water conservation efforts. These can include assistance with drought resistant landscaping, incentives for the removal of lawns, free replacement shower heads and subsidized replacement of water-using appliances, allowing and encouraging the use of graywater, and progressive water rates that punish heavy users.
Additional Articles
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