Desalination arguments don’t hold water

THE latest arguments against the construction of desalination plants, if you’ll pardon the pun, do not hold water.

The gross domestic product of Israel and South Africa are similar. Taken as an average the IMF, World Bank and CIA show SA with $729 297 (R9.5 million), ranked 29th and Israel, $296 988, ranked 54th. Yet Israel has found the resources to build five desalination plants along its Mediterranean coast. Running costs are another argument. The advanced technologies in Israel’s largest plant, Sorek, allows it to produce 1 000 litres of drinking water – about one week’s use per person – for R7.80. It is clear that it is not a matter of the cost of a plant or the running thereof − the issue is what will the cost be to the people living in the city and province if we don’t act now?

Virtually all the problems associated with the high costs of desalination (power supply, brine, filters, etc) have been solved, which is why there are at this time 40 such plants running successfully and economically throughout the world: in the US, Israel, China and India, among others.)

In 1990 the population of Cape Town was hovering around the 1-million mark. In 2001 it was 2 892 243. In 2017 it stands at 3 740 026.

What will it be in 10 years time? It is not going to go down, nor are we going to get appreciably more rain. Every person who comes into the area puts more strain on this limited resource, both for drinking and for agriculture.

When I was a boy living in Cape Town 70 years ago, we did not have cooler summers, nor more rain, and we had fewer people.

It will not help to condemn the use of desalination and lull the populace into a false sense of security. We no longer have a choice – we are in the middle of a crisis.