LETTER: Time for the Southwest to build desalination plants
On the front page of Thursday’s paper was the headline “A dire water forecast.” We are now facing even more water restrictions, but no one is providing any solutions.
I’m retired military and have traveled all over the world. Why don’t we hear about water shortages in the Middle East? Because they solved their problems years ago by building desalination plants in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Egypt.
A desalination plant cost $32 million to build — and add half of that to install the pipeline necessary to pipe water to all the states facing this drought. So for less than $1 billion we could build 10 of these plants and solve our drought problem. Our planet’s surface is 70 percent water. The pipeline could also be tapped into to solve the problem of wildfires.
Our politicians are proposing a $3.5 trillion bill on top of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The Southwestern states could simply work together to add $5 to everybody who depends on the Colorado River to finance this solution in their own water bill. I’m sure if we put this proposal to the voters it would get approved. We all want a solution to this problem, not more restrictions.