The Eco-Friendly Plan to Quench Central California’s Thirst

There are billions of gallons of water in California’s parched Central Valley. But the problem is this water is filled with salt, toxins and heavy metals, making it useless for irrigation. As we’ve mentioned before, traditional water desalination plants can be costly and use up a lot of energy. However, San Francisco-based start-up WaterFX has come up with a solution that uses heat to turn salty water into freshwater, and is sure to help the region’s water-pinched farmers.
WaterFX’s Aqua4 project, currently in phase one, is humming along in California’s agricultural hub that’s especially feeling this year’s awful drought. As Clean Technica reports, though small at 160 x 40 feet, this solar-powered plant is capable of turning otherwise unusable water into 65,000 gallons of freshwater a day. And here’s more good news — it also converts all that leftover brine and other minerals from the saltwater for reuse (such as calcium compounds for drywall or nitrates for fertilizer). You can watch the video above to see how it works.
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This water desalination plant could solve multiple problems. First, because it runs on solar power, the energy is cheap and clean. Second, local farms no longer have to pipe in water from other locations. Thanks to this project’s success, there are plans in the works to expand the facility later this year to quench more of California’s thirsty cities.

How One City Is Stepping Up to Help Solve Our Fresh Water Worries

With parts of the country running short on fresh water, San Diego is pushing forward on a deceptively simple solution — turning ocean water into drinking water. As Aljazeera America reports, the Carlsbad desalination plant that’s currently under state-approved construction is a $1 billion project to help solve our country’s water shortage.
Parts of the Middle East and Africa already operate large desalination plants, but similar projects are getting some push-back in the states. That’s because desalinating salt water can suck up a lot of energy and hinder less-invasive conservation efforts such as recycling waste water. However, with no end in sight to California’s drought, tapping the resources of the Pacific Ocean is necessary if conditions worsen. “Without doing desalination [and] without having another source of supply, we would clearly have shortages of water,” said Sandy Kerl, deputy general manager of San Diego Water Authority.
Once construction is complete in 2016, the Carlsbad plant will have the capacity to produce 50 million gallons of drinking water per day and provide 300,000 San Diego County residents with locally controlled, fresh drinking water.
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