After doing all the necessary research I now would have to say that desalination is a viable process to use as a way to fix our water crisis. When doing my research I found out that a majority of the desalination plants use fossil fuels instead of renewable energy resources and I think we should explore the option of converting some of the plants over. Our renewable energy resources are not going to be around forever where renewable energy resources will be. I know this will be an expensive transition, but in the end, I think it will be better for both use and our environment. As time goes on we all hope that the process of desalination will get cheaper and I would like to think this is the same for our renewable energy resources due to the …show more content…
After looking into this issue, I now can say I disagree with everyone else’s opinions, this does not have as big of an impact as people seem to think does. The main cause of confusion on this topic is because most of the time people are miss informed. When doing my research Voutchkov talked about how many of the animals and marine life can adapt to the change in salinity very easily while many people think they cannot. One of the articles talked about how the water is not always at a constant salinity anyways, so they are already used to adapting to different concentration levels. Most of the animals that cannot handle the fluctuation live in areas that are more consistent. When looking at what really gets dumped back into the water brine is one of the containments, but several other ones that come from the seawater prior to treatment. Yes, all of these discharged minerals get added back into the water. However, we must remember our marine life and ecosystem is already used to those populates in their living environment and they are diluted down enough to not have a major impact. If we continue to see the development of more desalination plants along the cost of California, it might be beneficial to begin studying and monitoring our oceans more often. This research was done when they only had two
Because of farm fertilizer, an excess quantity of nitrogen and phosphorus can be wash down becoming runoff into rivers. From this, marine algal blooms cause the water to turn green from the chlorophyll (Reed, 2011). Eutrophication then becomes a dilemma in the system causing either an increase of primary production or an expansion of algae. An enormous expansion of phytoplankton on the water’s surface is then established. At the same time the water column is also stratified, meaning things such as the temperature and salinity are not sync from top to bottom. The seasonal warm surface water has a low density forming a saltier layer above while the cooler and more dense water masses near the bottom layer is isolated from the top cutting off oxygen supply from the atmosphere (Overview, 2008).
Sydney Desalination Plant is located in the Kurnell Industrial Estate. it is a potable drinking water desalination plant which forms part of the water supply system of Greater Metropolitan Sydney. It supplies water to 17 suburbs, all around the east and inner west. It is not currently needed to treat water, and therefore the treatment facilities have been turned off. However when it is required for treatment, it uses a lot of energy, requiring energy a 67 turbine wind farm at Bungador. It currently supplies 15% of Sydney’s current water needs, and is part of an initiative by the NSW Government called Water4Life. The plant can produce 90 billion litres of drinking water per year.
Water is the foundational basis of life on Earth. Ecosystems, society and humans are completely dependent on it, and as the world population continues to grow, there will be more mouths to feed, and those people will need water to continue their daily lives. However, shortages and poor management leads to the destruction of natural habitats and human suffering. Desertification of land in China is ever-increasing, turning green, lush land into desert. However, this is due mainly in part, because of human activity, and global warming (Wang, Yang, Dong, & Zhang, 2009). The United States could experience a crisis similarly to China’s, but for now they have averted such a catastrophe, because of heavy regulation of water. Though there are water shortages in many parts of the world, it is unwise to export water from the Great Lakes to those regions. Two major reasons why diverting the Great Lakes is a terrible idea, one: it allows for waters wars to start on the basis of who is allowed to access it and for commodification purposes. Two, diverting water on such large scales could have cataclysmic effects on the local residents as well as the environment.
Somehow our oceans maintain the balance between being some of the most powerful forces on the earth, and the most easily disturbed masses on the planet. There are so many things that could go wrong within the countless cycles, and the delicate processes that stabalize nature and sustain the biosphere; and people are continually interfering with these cycles. Ocean acidification is one of the most obvious results of human interference upon nature. “Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value.” ("R. Buckminster Fuller, in Memoriam").
People around the world wake up each morning and brush their teeth with toothpaste, not knowing what's in it. Fluoride is being used in thing’s that shouldn't be, like water. Water is H2O that people around the drink constantly. Some drink more than others, like athlete’s, manual laborer’s, diabetic’s, and people with kidney disease which are exposed to more fluoride than other’s (12 Reasons). All the other water treatment chemicals are added to improve the water for safe drinking, but fluoride does not. How are we supposed to control how much fluoride goes into our bodies’? It’s impossible to control the dose each person receives because each person drinks different amounts of water. Portland Oregon made a agreeable decision to reject the plan to fluoridate drinking water supplies because fluoride is a hazardous, cancer-causing chemical that should not be added to water supplies that serve an entire city.
Mercer, Dave. "Desal Or Not To Desal? The Desalination Debate In Australia." Geodate 21.2 (2008): 5-7. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Dec. 2013.
It affects the states surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, such as Texas (epa.gov, 2016). It costs a great amount to restore algal blooms and remove Nitrogen nutrients from the water. Sometimes it can cost billions of dollars to clean polluted water. Also, the tourism industry loses about one billion dollars a year from polluted waters, in fishing and boating. (epa.gov, 2016) Nutrient pollution can be harmful to fish and often kills them, losing millions of dollars in commercial fishing. Moreover, people can play a role in nutrient pollution by the way they use their
Water pollution has had devastating effects on the environment, which include irreversible effects on the oceans ecosystem. People often underestimate the importance of the ocean. They don’t realize how much damage pollution has caused to the ocean and the thousands of creatures that inhabit it. Earth is a huge place, but resources are actually very limited and will not last forever unless there is a balance. We must protect the resources we have in order for them to last into the next generation.
Living in a world that is roughly 70% water, and all living creatures found on this planet depend on this resource whether directly or indirectly, making water quality an important topic and vital to sustain our world of cycles. “Determination of status of water quality of a river or any other water sources is highly indeterminate. It is necessary to have a competent model to predict the status of water quality and to advice for type of water treatment for meeting different demands.” (Bai V, 2009) With most of our water on this planet made of salt water and our constant damage towards the remaining water that can be consumed by humans is diminishing with improper distribution on a global scale. If our greed comes before companionship, and our quality of life is more important than pollution, then our future generations to come will be born into a world of chaos, and a scarce of a basic human necessity.
... incredibly relevant to today world. Brine shrimps are also used as test subjects due to their incredible resilience, and are also sold as a novelty item “sea monkeys.” Unfortunately, these unique critters have become threatened in some cases as water is diverted away (for human use) from high saline environments inhabited by brine shrimp. As a result, the water becomes more saline and usually results in a rising pH which can endanger the shrimps. The information provided in these two studies shows the need, function, means, and genetic explanation for osmoregulation. As humans continue to impact the environment, changing salinity will result in changing need for osmoregulation, and as a result, future scientists will need to explore how organisms can react to the need to osmoregulate more or less and how that will impact organism populations’ survival as a whole.
The average human can not live any longer than three days without water. Many of the world’s fresh water sources are running dry or are being contaminated, particularly in developing nations, leaving many without safe water to drink. Only two and a half percent of the Earth’s water is freshwater, and less than one percent is accessible by humans (not tied up in ice caps). This one percent of the Earth’s water supply is expected to sustain a population of over 7 billion people, each needing 2.6 liters a day to remain fully healthy, plus all of the water required for agriculture and industry. These scenarios will only become more and more prevalent as time moves on and we consume more water. The United Nations has classified our planet as being in the midst of a global “water crisis.” Global water supply and shortages are becoming an incredibly real and serious issue, and planning for the future is key to preventing population decline due to a lack of safe drinking water. Shortages of drinking water lead to wars and serious international conflict for basic human survival needs. One of the most popularly and commonly proposed solutions to this problem is to create seawater desalination plants to remove salt from ocean water to make it safe to drink. These water desalination plants, however, are not a viable option to carry us in to the future due to their potentially harmful impacts and expenses.
Freshwater is quite scarce, but it is even scarcer than one might think: about seventy percent of all freshwater is frozen in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland and is unavailable to humans. Most of the remainder is present as soil moisture or lies in deep underground aquifers as groundwater. It is not economically feasible to extract this waster for use as drinking water. This leaves less than one percent of the world’s fresh water that is available to humans. It includes the water found in lakes, reservoirs, groundwater that is shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost. These freshwater sources are the only sources that are frequently replenished by rain and snowfall, and therefore are renewable. At the current rates of consumption, however, this supply of fresh water will not last. Pollution and contamination of freshwater sources exacerbate the problem, further reducing the amount of freshwater available for human consumption. Something must be done if humans want to even survive in the near future: the lack of clean drinking water is already the number one cause of disease in the world today. The first step is worldwide awareness of the water crisis: governments and the citizens they govern worldwide need to know about this problem and be actively involved in solving this problem.
Smith, Zachary A., and Grenetta Thomassey. Freshwater Issues: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. Print
Yes, it decreases the water uptake of plants, reducing the growth of the plant. (This is referred to as the osmotic or water-deficit effect of salinity) The salt particles cannot pass easily through the highly-permeable root cells.... ... middle of paper ...
No matter how advanced our technology is, we are still not capable of generating water. We must utilize the existing water supply more efficiently in order to be sustainable. Many states in the United States believe that they are sustainable. However, polluted water habitats, drained aquifers and rivers, floods, and the salt intrusion show the exact opposite of what we believe.