Nahush Seecharan

Introduction to Rhetoric and Composition

5/11/22

Debunking Desalination

Introduction

The United States, despite being lauded as the modern cradle of democracy and the

powerhouse of the world today, still has its fair share of issues. Politically, the United States is in

shambles, with the introduction of the internet combined with more radical politicians and the

frustration of the American people creating extreme

political stratification and social and cultural division in

our nation. Given this, the government has become as

inefficient as ever when it comes to passing legislation and

making decisions to properly represent the American

people, and many feel as though the government, as a

result of this division and the inefficiency that stems from

it, does not make choices that benefit the population. The

expenditure breakdown that the US oversaw in 2018 can

be seen on the left. The government ended up putting an unprecedented amount of money into

things such as militarization and cutting back on environmental, scientific, and educational

budgets, leaving a large amount of people unhappy with how their tax money is being spent. Out

of those surveyed, 93.7% stated that they did not believe that the United States has been using

tax money in the right ways in the past administration (Seecharan).

 The unhappiness stems as a result of the United States facing a number of issues within

recent times, with one of the main, most concerning ones, being access to clean water. However,

while there are solutions available, the United States refuses to feed into any of these solutions

due to cost concerns, the main solution lauded to be a perfect one foregoing its financial tag,

being desalination. Desalination entails building desalination plants near salt water and funneling

said salt water into machinery at the plant in order to use a variety of techniques to turn it into

freshwater, available for drinking and regular usage. There are many misconceptions about

desalination that are shared by both the government and the public, however, and it is my firm

belief that desalination could solve the country’s water access problems if done in the right way.

The United States needs to reorganize its expenditures in order to make room for funding

desalination projects due to the existing water disparities around the country, the profitability of

desalination hitting a steady increase in recent years, and the rest of the world already taking

steps forward in investing in desalination technology, leaving America behind.

Proof of Issue

Although it may seem hard to believe to some, even though it is more salient around the

globe, the United States does have water issues in certain parts of the country. In fact, while over

66% of people surveyed aren’t aware of energy or water crises happening around their local area,

close to 75% are aware of these crises happening around the United States (Seecharan).

According to a study conducted in 2018, the number of United States citizens who do not have

access to clean, healthy water up to the standard of health that the government tests at ranges

anywhere between 9 and 45 million, which can be attributed to states not being able to manage

water management properly due to a lack of access to clean water (Allaire). A prime example of
this can be seen with the water crisis that happened in Flint, Michigan. Flint is infamous for the

disastrous water crises that ended up killing dozens and giving hundreds some sort of ailment.

This was due to the larger state government switching Flint’s water supply from that of a

healthier one supplying water to other large cities in Michigan, to that of a less developed one

that received far less maintenance, resulting in high levels of lead in the water that the people of

Flint drank, showered with, and

went about their daily lives with

(Parks). To the right can be seen a

photograph displaying the water

discoloration that was supplied to

the city of Flint over a period of a

few months. These are homes just

like your’s, with families just like

your’s, who are struggling with

something that they cannot

control. Imagine what it would be like for a family member to develop a sickness from

something as simple as lack of access to clean water, just because the people who represent you

wanted to turn a quick buck and cut costs.

This isn’t specific to low-income areas, however. Out of all places, California and Texas

have both had horrendous drought seasons recently causing a severe lack of clean water. Both

being naturally very dry, arid places, it would be expected to see droughts in these states.

However, they have gotten worse over the years due to poor practices by the people living in

these areas. For example, a severe lack of awareness caused people surveyed to say that they use
an average of about 21.25 gallons of water per day for all purposes, including showers, drinking,

dishes, etc. (Seecharan). However, in truth, showers alone take up roughly 1.5 gallons of water a

minute, meaning the real figure is somewhere around 88 gallons of water per day. A lack of

self-awareness causes people to not be able to practice the right water saving techniques in their

home. Of the same population, 56.3% stated that they sometimes employ water saving practices

in their household, including making sure to not leave water running when not necessary and

keeping their water usage in gardens and yards to a minimum, with a further 18.8% stating that

they very rarely do these things (Seecharan). This translates to less water for the population

across the state, contributing to bad droughts.

The above image comes from the US Drought Monitor, made by the University of

Nebraska-Lincoln. It shows where droughts are in the United States currently and how bad they

are. As you can see, while areas such as Texas and California are developed states with high

GDP contribution, they’re affected by some of the worst drought classifications throughout the

nation, with D4 droughts characterized by unfit farming land, extreme heat, a lack of water for
all recreational purposes, and a drop in livestock production due to these conditions, causing

food shortages, economic strife, and the need for a relocation of water which can cause water

problems in other parts of the country.

Better Profit and Decreasing Costs

As stated before, desalination is able to solve water crises across the country by taking

the abundance and almost infinite amount of salt water at our disposal and turning it into

freshwater, usable for all purposes. While in an ideal society, this would come with no

drawbacks, a solution so simple would have been exploited already if it were that easy. The issue

with desalination is that, currently in the United States, the costs of establishing a desalination

plant combined with the costs to maintain it with workers and energy to fuel the machinery

comes up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually. However, what people do not understand

about desalination is that it is a new technology. Similar to smartphones and laptops, as the years

go by, advancements happen that makes the production costs of yesterday’s equipment far

cheaper, and makes the machinery of the present far more efficient.

It is a popular opinion among experts that desalination plants are financially plausible if

certain things happen that allow the financial burden to lessen. The first is the decentralization of

desalination plants. Currently, state governments are largely responsible for the construction and

maintenance of desalination plants using federal funds. However, experts agree that, if larger

corporations were allowed to dip into the desalination market and use their excess cash flow to

partner with the government or each other and assist in the creation and maintenance of

desalination plants, then the process would be much easier to get off the ground, making it

cheaper in the process (Booth). In fact, 100% of all surveyed people thought that corporations
should play a larger role in solving America’s pressing issues by lending a financial hand in the

matter (Seecharan). On top of this, desalination in the United States is currently so expensive

because it is done vastly inefficiently when compared to other countries due to the US’ hesitancy

in committing to desalination. While some countries produce desalinated water at a rate of

$1.7/kGal, other counties pay up to $9.5/kGal, with the United States falling closer to the

$9.5/kGal. Given this, if more money was put into fixing the current desalination plants and

making them more efficient, we would essentially be able to have these plants pay for

themselves. On top of this, due to advancements in technology, the energy costs of desalination

are decreasing tremendously, and the final cost of water can be reduced by 20% in the next 5

years, and 50% in the next 20 years (Ziolkowska).

Moving past costs of the plants themselves, the

United States has done an extremely poor job of spreading

awareness about desalination. Currently, although it shows

a lot of promise in solving one of the country’s biggest

problems, not many people are aware of it. The pie chart

to the right displays how familiar those surveyed are with

desalination with poor results. (Seecharan).

Following Rather than Leading

Other countries in the global community are being far more cognizant of water issues and

their awareness of where individuals stand and how they can impact the world is superior. Israel

already gets almost half of their total water from desalination plants, according to their

government, with them reporting to produce over half a billion cubic meters of water from

desalination a year. Although this is roughly a quarter of the United States’ total, Israel has just

2.7% of the United States’ total population, putting them in a far better position. An example of

how Israel handles water situations better can be seen with how they treat the Dead Sea, a body

of water in Israel that is more salt than actual water due to the minerals in the sea. Israel has been

doing drilling and oil operations on the Dead Sea to make profit off of their natural resources,

however, given that the Dead Sea provides power to desalination plants through hydroelectricity

(Beiser), they deemed the long term profit of desalination favorable to the short term profit of

drilling, whereas the United States hasn’t deemed desalination promising enough for mass

investment as of yet. Because of this, Israel is frequently considered the world leader in

desalination, while the United States is following. This doesn’t hold very true to public opinion,

however, as when surveyed, 68% of people thought that the United States was the sole leader in

global science and technology research and development.

Moreover, a new era of desalination is currently being excavated titled nuclear

desalination. These new plants have nuclear reactors on-site, where the energy produced goes

straight to powering the machinery and the heat released from the reactors quickens the process,

making it all around cheaper and faster to produce water through desalination. Despite this being

blatantly better than the current methods of desalination, the United States has yet to jump on it

and currently, all of our desalination plants are traditional and do not use nuclear energy (Khan).
With the United States producing a third of the world’s nuclear energy, if just a portion of this

were to be put towards desalination, then the process would be cheaper, quicker, and the United

States would go on to pioneer what would possibly be the thing to solve world water crises for

decades to come.

The main concern with this method of desalination is concerns over the safety of nuclear

reactors. The below chart displays how much surveyed people trust nuclear energy and the safety

and ethics behind using nuclear reactors to produce our energy (Seecharan).

It can be viewed that, while most people trust the process to some degree, very few fully trust it,

meaning making our water supply partially dependent on nuclear power isn’t a good idea as of

yet. However, through awareness and campaigning to shift the public opinion, this can be

changed and the United States can safely explore the new avenue for desalination development.

Conclusion

While desalination is a relatively new solution to an age-old problem, the freshness is no

excuse to write it off as impractical and, just like any other technology, it WILL improve in the
future. Although the country may not be ready for a shift to desalination right now, if the

government does the right things with their money, such as funding campaigns to destigmatize

nuclear energy and get people excited about desalination, the people’s voice will start supporting

the concept more, and given that our government is supposed to represent our will, this is a sure

fire way to get the country to ease into betterment. Water is a universal right, and the fact that

some Americans do not have access to it is disheartening and disgraceful. Together, however, we

can use our right to democracy and voice our concerns and practice our freedom of speech to

chase the change that we want, need, and deserve.

Works Cited

Parks, Jeffrey. “Lead Testing Results for Water Sampled by Residents.” Flint Water Study

Updates, 19 Oct. 2016,

flintwaterstudy.org/information-for-flint-residents/results-for-citizen-testing-for-lead-300-

kits/.

Simeral, David. “US Drought Monitor.” National Drought Mitigation Center, 5 May 2022,

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx.

Allaire, Maura. “National Trends in Drinking Water Quality Violations.” PNAS, 12 Feb. 2018,

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1719805115.

Government of Israel. “Seawater Desalination in Israel.” Gov.IL, 9 Nov. 2020,

https://www.gov.il/en/departments/general/project-water-desalination-background.

Beiser, Vince. “Resurrecting the Dead Sea.” Pacific Standard, 14 June 2017,

psmag.com/environment/resurrecting-the-dead-sea-20011.
Seecharan, Nahush. “Water Disparity Questionnaire”. 11 May. 2022,

https://s.surveyplanet.com/8fe8gsyq

Booth, Dana. “Since We Last Spoke.” Pacific Standard, Sept. 2015, pp. 4–5. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=109146032&site=ehost-l

ive&scope=site.

Khan, Salah Ud-Din, and Jamel Orfi. “Socio-Economic and Environmental Impact of Nuclear

Desalination.” Water (20734441), vol. 13, no. 12, June 2021, p. 1637. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.3390/w13121637.

Ziolkowska, Jadwiga. “Is Desalination Affordable?-Regional Cost and Price Analysis.” Water

Resources Management, vol. 29, no. 5, Mar. 2015, pp. 1385–97. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11269-014-0901-y.