Guest Column
Desalinization, last resort for water conservation for Loreto
- Desalinization, last resort for water conservation for Loreto
- By Talli Nauman
- The Herald Mexico/El Universal
- January 21, 2007
A lot of people outside the Gulf of California Region are just beginning to take notice of the development boom threatening natural resources here in northwest Mexico. But concerned local citizens and international agencies already are convinced that projected population growth in the desert and fragile coastal areas is cause for preventative action.
In that vein the International Community Foundation, based just across the Mexico-U.S. border in San Diego, California, released a study this month that can help decision makers deal with the biggest challenge of the impending influx: water conservation.
The study “Water Management Challenges in the Loreto Region,” addresses the feasibility of converting seawater to fresh water in the state of Baja California Sur. It is part of a series called Alternative Futures that is giving Loreto and other Baja Peninsula locales an opportunity to take development planning into their own hands and even demonstrate model consensus building. In a matter of weeks, the local non-profit Grupo Ecologista Antares will discuss the document with foreign and domestic investors, as well as researchers and other environmentalists supporting the cause of sustainable development.
Loreto also has been drawing on lessons from the coastal tourist real estate business in Los Cabos further to the south. Loreto’s environmentalists and city fathers are trying to avoid mistakes already made, which have caused burgeoning migration to Los Cabos from the United States, Canada and the rest of Mexico. The incursion is stressing available water in this desert climate.
With no natural surface streams, most of the Baja Peninsula depends on underground water tables for its entire drinking and irrigation supply. The aquifers in turn depend solely on the recharge of rainfall from hurricanes that pass a couple times a year, much of which rapidly washes away to the sea.
The dozens of golf courses drawing visitors from abroad to luxury living in Los Cabos could soon use up the aquifers, as could the 40,000 new units of accommodations slated for retirees and snow birds in Loreto, several hours’ drive to the north. If that number is not scaled back, it means an eventual population of 800,000, compared to the 120,000 for which technology can make water available.
The dimensions of the ensuing disaster would be daunting. But the process would be no mystery. It was already demonstrated not too many years back when agricultural water use in the Santo Domingo Valley just a little further north sapped the ground water and allowed sea water to fill in the underground space left behind. The result was salinity so high that the crops would no longer grow. The same has been seen on the other side of the Gulf of California along the coast of Sonora state, where desertification is the tragic reminder of failure to save water.
Los Cabos has opted to take the salt out of sea water as an additional source of the vital liquid. Its desalinization plans are so far advanced that a treatment plant may begin operations as soon as a month from now. Loreto environmentalists and officials are watching carefully to see if the big facility works, because they may want to build one themselves. They would include it in a four-point strategy that prioritizes reducing wasted water, creating a series of small dams, and limiting the number of resort units to be built.
The study states that desalinization should be used only as a last resort, if and when other methods of meeting demands are insufficient. In that case, the best available technology, should be used. That is reverse osmosis with an energy recovery system, because of its efficiency and lower environmental impact.
A briny waste effluent is the main contamination concern. The conventional practice of discharging salt removed from seawater is to put it back in the ocean. But that constitutes a significant threat to unique gulf marine species and habitat. So, land disposal and deep well injection might be considered, but they aren’t really all that desirable either.
The Loreto Bay National Marine Park is a protected area that calls for special attention in a desalinization scheme. Countless technical studies will be required. Costs could be high considering that brine mitigation will be necessary.
Currently, residents are reviewing the pros and cons. No decision has been made to advertise or contract a desalinization plant. The study and its use as a point of departure for discussion assure that if desalinization is going to be done, it can be done to the best of human ability.
- The choices that Loreto makes about how to safeguard its water in the face of development pressure will influence others made in Mexico and the rest of the world, where water is of the essence. In making the choices, developers and other voters should be encouraged to put the value of conservation ahead of the desire for quick money. Otherwise, the attraction of Loreto could be obliterated and, with it, the benefits of sustainable development.
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- Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. (talli@hughes.net)
- Article at:
http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/23097.html
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