I always try to write articles where the base is investment and the possibility of increasing capital. However, today I write this article because it is a subject that should concern us all, since I am talking about something vital for our lives: The future big business will be… drinking water...
"Water". That unfortunately does not escape capital, since they see in it an important source of income that currently moves tens of billions of dollars annually.
Drinking water is more than essential and essential for human life to be possible in our world: “The land”, since it is much more than a material good, than a commodity, (although for many companies, its commercialization It is an excellent business with the sale of bottled water), it is a natural resource, hence drinking water is specifically a first-rate human right and an essential element of national sovereignty itself, since, most likely, (hopefully it does not happen).), whoever controls the water, will control the economy and all life in the not so distant future, even if it seems incredible or science fiction.
Man's efforts to improve the environment in which he lives and try to improve his quality of life, will undoubtedly depend on the availability and possibility of water, with a close correlation between water quality and public health, between the possibility of accessing water and therefore the level of hygiene and the possible abundance of water, with the economic and tourist growth of a country.
Measures aimed at expanding and improving public drinking water service delivery systems, (which are often not specified), would contribute to a reduction in morbidity and mortality, related to enteric diseases, since these diseases are directly associated or indirectly with the supply of deficient water, or scarce provision of water.
Currently, more than 1,500 million people do not have access to drinking water and almost 4,000 million lack adequate sanitation.
According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 80% of all diseases in the developing world, the majority, are caused by the lack of clean water and adequate sanitation, this being one of the main causes of diseases and deaths especially in children.
This critical situation is due to the fact that only a very small part of the populations, particularly in developing countries, have access to an acceptable quality water supply, not the rest, since according to studies, estimates that in some countries, only 21% of the rural population has water of satisfactory quality.
Based on these statistics, there is an urgent need to be aware of the care of water use.
Since without realizing it, we are putting this essential resource at serious risk, not only for ourselves, but for future generations, we must think that each drop of water has immense value since it represents “life” and that unfortunately we waste and we do not value.
If we analyzed the health impacts, which in different populations, due to not having access to water in good sanitation, are already undeniable. (And many of us squander it).
Despite the contributions of scientific and technological progress, water remains a problem, for this reason, in the context of the creation of an increasingly globalized world, a clear policy should be adopted to organize the efforts that converge in the satisfaction of this basic need for each and every one of the inhabitants of our planet.
Drinking water is a vital resource for human beings and the right to drinking water and sanitation is an integral part of human rights, (officially recognized at different international events).
Water has never been considered for what it really is, a universal common good, the vital heritage of humanity.
Access to water must be considered as a basic right, individually and collectively inalienable.
Faced with this situation, a new culture of sustainable development in the area of water should be chosen. We must take care of our rivers, aquifers, wetlands and lakes that are much more than just water storages, as they are our "life" reserves.
As it is a worrying topic, in my next installments I will give information on different features, both water, and the great business that is, its bottling and marketing. Why go down.
Fresh water is a limited resource, water covers 79% of the earth's surface; 97.5% of the water is salty, only 2.5% is sweet.
Ice caps and glaciers contain 74% of the world's fresh water.
Most of the rest is found deep in the ground or encapsulated in the ground as moisture.
Only 0.3% of the world's fresh water is found in rivers and lakes.
For human use, less than 1% of the planet's underground surface fresh water can be accessed.
In 25 years, it is possible that half of the world's population will have difficulty finding fresh water in sufficient quantities for consumption and irrigation.
Currently, more than 80 countries, (40% of the world population) suffer from a severe water shortage and conditions may worsen in the next 50 years, as the population increases and global warming disrupts rainfall regimes.
A third of the world population lives in areas with water shortages, where consumption exceeds supply. Western Asia is the most threatened region.
More than 90% of the population of that region suffers from great stress due to water scarcity and water consumption exceeds renewable fresh water resources by 10%.
Fresh water is an essential resource for health. Water is an essential element for human life, for basic health and for survival, as well as for food production and economic activities.
According to: Guissé H. (1997), in humans, the loss of water can have serious consequences if it reaches 10% of the mass present in the body, and cause death from 20%.
On the other hand, although the water is always loaded with different mineral and organic substances, its content in adult and healthy men ranges from 58 to 67%, while in the newborn it is in the order of 66 to 74%.
Waterborne diseases cause 80% of the diseases and deaths that occur in developing countries and cause the death of a child every eight seconds.
Half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from water-borne diseases. To think about it, right ?, while many of us wasted it.
Poor water and sanitation services have been shown to be the direct cause of the deterioration of health conditions, as well as an important cause of diseases originating in the environment.
The impact of the lack of safe water means that almost half of the inhabitants of developing countries, especially girls and boys, suffer from diseases caused directly or indirectly, by the consumption of contaminated food or water, or by organisms pathogens that develop in water (United Nations, 2003).
The figures are dramatic: each year, 2.2 million inhabitants of developing countries, (mostly minors), die from diseases associated with lack of access to drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, This means that 6,000 boys and girls die every day for these reasons.
A person needs to drink about two to three liters of water per day.
According to the parameters of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), a reasonable supply of water should correspond to at least twenty liters per person per day and the facility should be located less one kilometer from the user's home.
However, almost 4% of the world's population lives 60 kilometers or less from the coast.
Diseases and deaths related to polluted coastal waters cost the world economy, alone, $ 16 billion per year.
On average, the daily domestic use of fresh water by a person from a developed country is ten times higher than that of a person from a developing country.
In the UK, a person uses an average of 135 liters of water per day. In developing countries, a person uses 10 liters with luck, incredible… but real.
Rivers form a hydrological mosaic on the political map of the world There are approximately 263 international river basins, covering 45.3% of the planet's land surface (excluding Antarctica) and inhabited by more than half of the world's population. world A third of those 263 transboundary basins are shared by more than two countries.
In very few cases, the limits of the hydrographic basins coincide with the administrative border limits.
Many countries also share underground aquifers. Underground aquifers store up to 98% of accessible freshwater sources.
They provide 50% of the drinking water in the world, 40% of the water used for industry and 20% of the water for agriculture.
It would be interesting to do an exercise:
Try to live two days without using drinking water, see how we manage to clean ourselves, wash dishes, clothes, clean the house, the bathrooms, the kitchen, if we are thirsty, see how we do without the precious liquid, (of course, not buying bottled agra), living as these marginalized people live, who do not have the same, (I had an experience, where I could bathe when it rained) to feel first hand what it means not to have it, it seems to me that in this way, we would begin to respect and value it.
We continue in my next chapter as it is a more than interesting topic.
Will the future big business be… drinking water?
That does not escape capital, since they see in it an important source of income, which currently moves billions of dollars.
Water in the Future
According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP, 2003), two hundred scientists from 50 countries have determined that water scarcity is one of the two most pressing problems of the new millennium (the other is climate change).
Since 1950, the use of water in the world has more than tripled. Over the past 25 years, the availability of water in the world has decreased by 50%.
If the current trend continues, in the next 20 years, humans will use 40% more water than today.
According to projections, by 2025, 4,000 million people (almost half of the total population) are predicted to suffer from water problems.
Likewise, the number of people living in countries with stress due to lack of water will go from the current 470 million to 3,000 million in the year 2025. Most of these people live in developing countries.
To achieve the objectives of fresh water supply, the United Nations (UN) assures that it will use the decade-long campaign to call on governments to fulfill the promises made at the 2000 Millennium Summit, where leaders promised to reduce the number of people without access to clean water by 2015.
For this, it will be necessary to supply water to 1,500 million more people in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Almost 200 million people in Africa suffer from a severe water shortage.
In 2025, approximately 230 million Africans will have problems due to insufficient water and 470 million will live in countries with stress due to lack of water.
Water problems are more related to poor management than to the scarcity of that resource.
In some cases up to 50% of the water in urban areas and 60% of the water used for agriculture is wasted due to losses and evaporation.
Logging and land conversion to meet the demands of human beings have halved the world's forests by half, increasing land erosion and water scarcity.
Between 300 and 400 million people worldwide live in and depend on wetlands.
Wetlands are extremely efficient wastewater treatment mechanisms, as they absorb chemicals and filter out pollutants and sediments.
Half of the world's wetlands have disappeared due to urbanization and industrial development. The only way to achieve sustainable development and to alleviate poverty will be through better management of rivers and wetlands and the lands where they drain and drain, as well as through greater investment in them.
Principles of the right to drinking water: The first is the right to have a sufficient quantity to consume drinking water. About 50 to 100 liters of water.
The second is that the water must meet the maximum standards to be consumed.
The third is that the supply center must be close to the residence and easily accessible.
The fourth and last is that access to water cannot mean giving up the consumption of other vital goods. In such a case, access to water must be entirely free.
Water in the International Context: Water promises to be, in the middle of the 21st century, what oil was for the 20th century and part of the 21st century, the precious asset that will determine the wealth of nations.
Water springs up as the greatest geopolitical conflict of the 21st century. In 2025, the demand for this element, so necessary for human life, is expected to be 56% higher than the supply.
It is estimated that, currently, the 6.670 million inhabitants in the world would require 20% more water.
According to the United Nations Report on the Development of Water Resources in the World (WWDR), more than a problem of scarcity, “it is a crisis in water resources management, essentially caused by the use of inadequate methods”.
The water resources in lakes, rivers and aquifers are, in general, renewable through precipitations that constitute, in short, the main source of water for humanity.
Through the phenomenon of evapotranspiration, water can complete its natural cycle and then precipitate in the form of rain, irrigating ecosystems, forests, and grazing and cropland.
On average, humans consume 8% of total renewable fresh water, 26% of evapotranspiration and 54% of accessible runoff water.
Use of Water in the World
In a globalized world like today, it is important to highlight the relationship between renewable fresh water and the number of inhabitants on different continents, in addition to the current state in terms of quality and access.
In this way, you will be in a position to better understand the political positions on the destination of this resource worldwide.
Let's see the relationship between the volume of water and the corresponding number of inhabitants in% at the Continent level:
- Continent Water% Inhabitants% Asia 36 60 Africa 11 12 North America A. Central 8 15 South America 26 6 Australia 4 1 Europe 8 13
Source: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Almost all of Europe is in a situation that ranges from critical to severe, due to the exploitation of natural resources, as well as pollution caused by industries, especially petrochemicals and the use of agrochemicals.
Of its 55 rivers, only 5 are uncontaminated.
For its part, Asia shows an extremely serious situation in the water supply that is even the cause of armed confrontations between countries.
In China, the Yellow River and the rivers that feed the northern plains and underground reserves have been affected by pollution, mainly due to the boom in economic growth and incorrect environmental management. As a consequence, the north of the country is drying up and two thirds of all cities do not have enough water throughout the year.
In Australia, the overexploitation of rivers and groundwater reserves, is causing large amounts of salt to concentrate on the surface, the attempt to divert the course of some rivers ended up causing an irreversible ecological disaster, since a large amount was lost of fertile land.
In North Africa, despite the fact that there are two enormous aquifers, the water supply is in critical condition, with the aggravating circumstance that most of its rivers and lakes are polluted.
In the United States, the situation is also worrying, given that half of the population (150 million people) depend on groundwater for domestic use.
American aquifers are contaminated and have depleted their capacity, despite still having reserves for about 40 years.
It is worth highlighting the case of the Ogallala aquifer, whose volume has decreased by about 60 meters, due to overexploitation to irrigate large areas of cereals; It also has high levels of contamination from the use of pesticides, chemical wastes, and solid waste.
Canada owns 9% of the world's fresh and renewable water; This resource is mostly underground and its volume is about 37 times greater than that of the water of lakes and rivers throughout the country.
More than a quarter of the population of this country is supplied with groundwater for domestic use.
However, as in the rest of the countries, there are serious pollution problems, due to the presence of petrochemicals, pesticides, sewage and nitrates, which put the health of the population at risk due to the high toxicity that is generated.
In the case of Latin America, the Guaraní aquifer, it turns out, is the largest source of drinking water in the world and is located in a huge area that includes:
Great part of the Argentine Mesopotamia (Corrientes and Misiones), the coasts of the Uruguay river, the East of Paraguay and the South of Brazil:
This groundwater source has an extension of 2,000,000 (two million) square kilometers and is divided into:
- 3% Uruguayan Territory 8% Paraguayan Territory 17% Argentine Territory 72% Brazilian Territory
Drinking water, which is filtered by the permeability of the soil during the rains, is found at a depth of 50 meters.
And that underground lake is itself 40 meters deep. It is calculated that the water in this huge lake can supply all of humanity, 6,700,000,000 (six thousand seven hundred million) inhabitants for 200 years, as it is a renewable reserve according to the studies carried out.
However, in Latin America there are problems of water availability and quality, as the World Bank Report on Health and Environment points out:
In most cases, the water problem in the region is due to the lack of an adequate legal, institutional and regulatory framework, to enormous distortions in prices and to subsidized services that benefit the most prosperous sectors of society to the detriment of the poor.
Water and agriculture: World Bank data shows that 70% of the world's water is for agricultural use, a proportion that rises to 82% in low- and middle-income countries, compared to 30% in high-income countries.
Suffice it to remember that one kilogram of wheat or rice requires 1,500 and 4,500 liters of water, respectively, while cotton requires 10,000.
Irrigated land represents only about a fifth of the total cultivable area of developing countries.
Conversely, water for industrial use in these countries is 59% compared to 10% in low- and middle-income countries.
The industry has great needs for water; This sector absorbs about 20% of the available resources. As an example, the manufacture of a ton of steel requires an average of 200 cubic meters of water, that of a ton of paper, between 50 and 300 cubic meters, and that of an automobile, about 30,000 liters of water.
The importance of the water resource for food production is condensed in the United Nations Report on the development of water resources in the world (United Nations Organization, 2003).
The report highlights that irrigation currently consumes 70% of the total water supply, an amount that will increase by 14% or 17% in the next thirty years due to the increase in irrigated areas.
The document also refers to the fact that most irrigation systems operate inefficiently, which means that approximately 60% of the water that is extracted, evaporates, or returns to the river bed or to underground aquifers is lost.
Shallow groundwater, an important source of irrigated water, is also a cause for concern in the aforementioned report, which highlights factors such as over-pumping of aquifers, contamination by agrochemicals and excessive extraction of groundwater.
Wastewater is also used for irrigation: they supply around 10% of the total irrigated land in poor countries. They are generally used directly, without treatment, with the risks that this entails from exposing workers and consumers to bacterial, amoebid, viral, and nematode parasites, as well as organic, chemical, and heavy metal contaminants.
The use of untreated wastewater is also a barrier to the export of crops and partially restricts their access to the market.
"Water" is something that does not escape capital, since they see in it an important source of income, which currently moves billions of dollars.
It is known that all living organisms need water, life was born in water 3.5 billion years ago. Each cell is largely made up of water.
Human beings use most of the water at their disposal, which threatens the existence of other species, fauna and flora.
Lack of water leads to the disappearance of species, poverty, mortality and contagion of diseases.
Recent California fires from long dry spells are an example of the lack of a policy that promotes controlled water use and disproportionate population growth.
Water exists in all three physical states: liquid, solid, and gas. It is also one of the few substances that is less dense when it is solid than in its liquid state, hence the ice floats.
On the other hand, the water is in constant motion, rising to the sky as steam, in rivers and seas, and then falling on the Earth's surface in the form of rain.
Plants play a fundamental role in the water cycle, absorbing water from the soil and expelling it into the air through their leaves.
Furthermore, water has great power to absorb and maintain heat. For this reason, ocean currents play an important role in Earth's climate.
But, on the other hand, there is bottled water, which is a better and healthier option to soft drinks, but plastic bottles represent a threat to the environment.
Globally, water bottle consumption doubled between 1997 and 2006, with the United States leading the way in America, with about 99 liters per person in 2006.
Worldwide, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used each year to make bottles, but in the United States less than 20 percent of them are recycled. Many people believe that bottled water is a purer version, coming from natural springs.
However, 40% of bottled water comes from the tap.
World production doubled between 1997 and 2006, bottled water appears as one of the planet's problems.
It is also the protagonist of a huge social injustice, because the heavy drinkers are the inhabitants of rich countries and not those of those places where the tap, if any, does not give any health guarantee.
Countries with the highest consumption of liters per capita of bottled water:
Italy with 192, United Arab Emirates 181, Mexico 179, Belgium 161, Spain 146, France 139, Germany 128, Lebanon 107, Switzerland 104, USA 99, Cyprus 98, Saudi Arabia 93, R, Czech 90, Portugal 83, Slovenia 81. Being the world average of 25 liters.
The reasons for choosing bottled water instead of tap water are multiple: it tastes better, for comfort at work, in meetings or as a substitute for other drinks.
In Spain, for example, 31% of bottled water goes to restaurants or hotels.
In the United States, where consumption is also high but not reaching the level of Italy (an American drinks 99 liters a year and an Italian, 192), bottled water, which does not have the calories of soft drinks, satisfies concerned consumers for obesity.
Bottled water and ecological disaster: Bottled water is presented to us as a product that ensures our health and makes us see that it is a sign of quality of life, of a certain standard of living and respectful of the environment.
The bottled water sector is growing very rapidly throughout the world, being the most buoyant business at present, but also one of the least regulated, giving rise to truly scandalous situations.
The water business figures speak for themselves. In the 1970s, the annual volume of bottled water marketed worldwide was around 1 billion liters.
In the following decade consumption doubles, however it is from the 1990s when growth is already exponential.
In the year 2001, the Americans spent 6,880 million dollars, in 2006 they were already about 10,980 million dollars, with a consumption of 25,800 million liters of bottled water.
This represents an annual growth of over 9%, according to data provided by Beverage Marketing Corporation and the International Bottled Water Association.
The average annual consumption of bottled water for an American is around 99 liters per person / year.
The fashion for bottled water is even greater in Europe. Germany consumes 10.3 billion liters, France 8.5 billion liters and Spain 5.5 billion liters.
Italians have an average consumption, in 2006, of 192 liters per person / year and Spaniards of 146 liters per year.
The global consumption of bottled water reached 154,000 million liters, in 2006, (where would they get so much mineral water from?) And represents an increase in consumption of 57% compared to 2001.
This represents an expense of about $ 100 billion. The average price of a liter of bottled water is $ 0.65.
Bottling factories frequently draw water, which they bottle, from the same water network that reaches the public.
In many cases, like Coca Cola, what they do is add a package of minerals, this is what they call “mineral water”, thus increasing its price, making it one of the largest businesses in the world.
As an example, in March 2004, Coca Cola recognized in the United Kingdom that its Dassain brand water was ordinary tap water, which was sold in half-liter bottles.
More than half a million bottles were recalled from the market arguing that they had detected levels of bromate that exceeded UK legal standards.
These industries are contributing to the destruction of public water sources with the aim of supplying “pure water” to the world elite.
These companies are water predators, continually looking for new water sources to cover their insatiable business needs, continually buying water rights from farmers, once they are exhausted they abandon them creating numerous ecological problems.
In South America, North American and European multinationals are buying large wilderness areas that include comprehensive hydrographic systems.
These companies deplete not only their own land systems but the surrounding areas.
This is what happened in Tillicum Valley in British Columbia, where the Canadian Beverage Corp company has been exploiting the region's groundwater so intensely that the inhabitants and farmers of the area were left without it.
This water bottling industry says that it is respectful with the environment but this is not the case, because as we can see it uses water in an unfriendly way and also 90% of the containers it uses are plastic.
All of us who go through the fields see an infinity of these containers that are highly polluting the environment. These companies will tell us that they comply with the law scrupulously on this issue, but even so, plastic packaging must disappear urgently.
The waste of energy is also important, serving as an example that to produce the bottled water consumed in the United States, 1.5 million barrels of oil need to be burned, enough to power the motors of 100,000 cars for a year.
In Spain they mean about 330,000 barrels of oil, which means spending 22,000 cars.
I think it would be prudent for this business to be controlled and for it to have much more demanding regulation than the current one in the economic, health and environmental areas.
It can be understood that private business must generate benefits, but that it is not harmful to the environment and therefore the world in which we live.
Despite this gloomy outlook, the battle for water is not only not lost, but on the way to being won in the medium term.
Once again, new technologies become allies that provide valuable alternatives, both when seeking improvements in the reuse of existing resources, as well as in obtaining new resources. One of these new pathways is the desalination process.
This technology is one of the main solutions for the future to alleviate in a rational and profitable way the water shortage that affects certain areas of the planet.
In short, desalination uses a resource that exists in abundance of salty seawater to achieve a scarce and valuable product, both in human and economic terms: drinking water.
In this sense, it is a technology that complements and joins the existing water reuse.
We have a good answer in the Middle East. In some countries in that area, the option was chosen to solve the water crisis: desalination.
According to the World Desalination Association, there are an estimated 17,000 desalination units in the world. Well, 61% are in the Middle East.
But even though the Arabs are at the head of this race in search of new resources, they will have to invest much more to alleviate their scarcity.
In Africa, some 300 million people currently do not have access to water and sanitation. The case of the Republic of Cape Verde is exemplary there, where dozens of desalination plants have been built to alleviate water scarcity.
But despite the development of this former Portuguese colony, the rest of the continent does not breathe as comfortably and other countries have already opted for desalination.
In Europe, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus they use this technique. In South America, the water situation is similar to that of the other continents. For example, in Mexico, according to the National Association of Water and Sanitation Companies of Mexico, 11 million people do not have access to drinking water.
Australia, which has imposed significant restrictions on both human consumption and use by the industrial sector, in order to reduce the misuse of water resources, launched an ambitious plan that aims to reuse up to a third of wastewater by 2015.
In addition, desalination plants have been running for several years in Japan and Kazakhstan. In the United States, desalination focuses on the states of California, Texas, and Florida.
However, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) criticizes in a report the "hectic construction" of desalination plants and their negative impact on the environment and climate change.
According to the study 'Making water, desalination: option or distraction for a thirsty world? »', Spain is the country with" the greatest desalination capacity in the western world ", although for the WWF this is not the best solution to guarantee supply of water.
"Desalinating the sea is an expensive and high energy cost way to get water", since desalination leads to the emission of greenhouse gases and the destruction of the coasts, which exacerbates climate change.
According to environmental organizations, the countries with the most drinking water problems are turning to desalination of seawater as a solution to their water management problems. These include Australia, the Middle East, Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, followed by India and China. "In all cases, these are large areas affected by water scarcity and densely populated," they point out.
For WWF, the frenetic construction of desalination plants in Spain stems from the cancellation in 2004 of the Ebro diversion project, which was one of the central pieces of the National Hydrological Plan, and "its traditional attempt to guarantee water in one of the driest countries in Europe ».
The report criticizes "the transformation of arid Almería into the highest concentration of horticultural greenhouses in Europe between 1987 and 2004" and the Carboneras desalination plant, built in that region and which is the largest in Europe.
In addition, the increase in tourism in Spain has also led to greater water consumption due to the constant construction of secondary residences in urbanizations built near golf courses, such as Desert Springs (north of Carboneras).
In this same sense, the WWF recalls that "Spain set a new record by building 800,000 new properties in 2005, mainly on the south coast", and ensures that this number exceeds the buildings made in France, Germany and the United Kingdom together.
For all these reasons, the environmental defense organization echoes "the voices that maintain that the real problem of water in Spain is more linked to unrealistic expectations and poor water management."
The study refers to the importance of the Spanish desalination industry worldwide, since the country's companies "participate in the development of desalination capacity in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Middle East".
But unlike other developed countries that use desalinated water for urban uses, Spain dedicates an incredible proportion of desalinated water to agriculture, 22%, the highest percentage in the world.
In theory, the high cost of desalinated water rules out its agricultural use, but "since 1983, the Spanish government has financed desalinated water so that its price is similar to what families pay."
Regarding desalination in the rest of the world, it is estimated that around 60% of the freshwater needs in the Persian Gulf are satisfied with desalination, largely with heat treatments that have high energy consumption, and Perth (Australia) plans to satisfy a third of its demand by this method.
Despite numerous criticisms of desalination plants, some countries have entered a spiral of promoting the manufacture of water without prior analysis of its use and abuse.
Despite good experiences in India to treat water contaminated with membrane technologies, desalination plants are not helping to solve the problem of 1.2 billion poor people in the world who are not assured of drinking water supplies. Mass desalination shows that we close our eyes to their problem and the impacts on the environment.
On the other hand, Acciona Agua has been selected by the American company Poseidón Resources Corporation to carry out the design, engineering, construction and commissioning of a seawater desalination plant in the city of Carlsbad, California, which will be the largest in the United States.
The new Carslbad desalination plant will involve an investment of 300 million dollars and will produce 204,000 m3 / day of high quality drinking water. The Carlsbad facility will be among the five largest in the world and will be the largest plant in the United States, as it practically doubles the production capacity of the Tampa (Florida) desalination plant, which until now ranked first in the ranking with 104,000 m3 / day and that it has just been completely remodeled by a joint venture between Acciona Agua and the American company American Water, which will also be in charge of its exploitation.
Acciona Agua and Poseidón plan to close the project and definitive contracts in June 2007 to start construction of the plant from then on so that it is completed and can start operating and producing water throughout 2009. The plant is Designed with the latest technical advances in energy saving and recovery and meets the stringent environmental requirements of the State of California.
The Carlsbad desalination plant is a fundamental tool to guarantee the supply of quality drinking water in the San Diego region, reducing the region's dependence on the supply of water that is currently made from neighboring regions.
The San Diego Region is undertaking an ambitious diversification plan for water supplies, through measures that promote water saving and the search for alternative sources such as desalination and reuse. The region plans that, with the set of previous measures, the energy consumption necessary to ensure water supply will be substantially reduced by 2030.
Fortunately… planet earth will not run out of drinking water, thanks to the technology created by man, since once again it has been able to respond to a need as urgent as drinking water, however, we must be aware of its use and do not waste it since, like all services, it has its price.
