Title: Arid Australia Sips Seawater, at a Cost - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/7/11/world/asia/11waterhtml?partner=rss&emc=rss
By: Norimitsu Onishi
Published July 10, 2010
Summary:
Australia is the driest continent with a living population of people. For centuries they have searched for a way to obtain freshwater efficiently. Finally after many years, desalination has been put into place. In 3 years when all of the plants in major cities will be completed, thirty percent of Australia's water will be coming from desalination plants. Over thirteen billion dollars are being spent in the efforts to complete the new plants. This is a much needed step because the climate change is making water shortages an even bigger issue. Many enviromentalists, however, are against the idea because desalination plants contribute to global warming. Despite this, Australia is going forward with the idea.
Opinion:
It is interesting that Australia is surrounded by water and yet cannot obtain a sufficient amount of water. Thankfully now they can obtain usuable water by using desalination plants to make the salt water around them drinkable. I believe that this is a great idea, but it is extremely expensive and is detrimental to the enviroment. This is why I believe that Australia should attempt to find other ways to obtain water. In spite of the negative effects desalination plants have, Australia can create many jobs by creating these institutions, thus boosting the economy. This article reminds me of Africa. Africa is also struggling with water availability, but in contrast they have a much weaker economy. Fortunately, Australia has the economical means to provide water to their people.
Questions:
1. How else do you think Australia can obtain freshwater?
2. Do the pros of desalination plants overweigh the cons?
3. How are the people of Australia affected by the lack of freshwater?
I find this new concept of obtaining water very interesting. Just the other day, we did some lab about desalination and it took 20 minutes to seperate a little bit of water from its contaminants. Despite the small population of Australia, it is still a lot of water to distribute to everyone. Also, we found that once all the water desalinated, it went back up the tube, mixing itself once again with its contaminants. These problems may make obtaining water difficult but then again, desalination may be one of the best, if not the best way to obtain water. It would simply cost too much to import all the water from foreign countries. It would cost more to ship the water than how much the water itself costs. And water is very scarce in Australia, considering the extremeties throughout the different seasons, making it very difficult to recieve local ground or surface water.
ReplyDeleteAnswer to 3: Australia's affected in the same way as other countries without water. The only difference is that Australia has the financial resources to aid itself in its lack of water. Without its economic power, Australia would be in the same boat as the other water deprived countries. People would constantly die from thirst everyday. The desalination factories are only a result of the money and economy Australia withholds.
I was very surprised when I read about Australia's fresh water shortage. Drinking water is something our country takes for advantage. Unlike a lot of other countries, like Africa or Australia, we drink clean water like it is nothing. Australia seems to have a good idea. I think the desalination plants would be a very good way to get their country some fresh water. Although it is bad for the environment there really aren't anymore probable ways to solve their problem. Hopefully this way of obtaining water will work out for them and maybe they can find some solutions to the environmental concerns of the desalination plants. To bring this back to my life, we recently did a desalination lab. The water was slowly seperated from the contaminents out of the test tube. The desalination plants is just a larger scale of our experiment.
ReplyDeleteAnswer to Question 2:
Without fresh water Australia will eventually die out. Fresh water is one of the most important things humans need to survive. Without the fresh water, Australia's economy would start getting worse and worse, and people would start dying because of contaminents in the water and water shortages. Although desalination plants contribute to global warming there really isn't much Australia can do. Fresh water is very important and if they don't solve this problem head on they may not have much time left.
Austraila is very blessed to now have distillation plants in their country. In the United States we have drinking water available to use at all times. I could not imagine not having a source of water. It stunned me when i read that Australia is the driest continent. I thought it would have been Africa because I saw how some people their have to get their water. I am glad I have an easy way to get water.
ReplyDeleteAnswer to Question 2:
Yes, the pros do outweigh the cons in this situation. Getting water to people is essential. The reason of getting water to people would outweigh almost any con. The water distillation plants were a great idea.
Opinion: I am very happy for Australia at the fact that they will see an increase in fresh drinking water. But, this comes at what cost? We researched desalination when we did that lab in our environmental science lab. I found that more than half of the salt that is extracted from the water is dumped right back in the ocean. When water has too much salt in it, it can become a dead zone. The water will become polluted and dead and could cause serious problems in upcoming years for the people of Australia. Again, I think that it's great for them that they're getting all of this fresh water, but they have to know the effects of desalination and be able to counteract them in the following years.
ReplyDeleteAnswer to Question 2: I'm not very sure on how to answer this question as I explained some cons in my opinion. If the people of Australia can counteract the problems of desalination, the pros can outweigh the cons, but if the people can't, it goes the other way around.