(GP/GT) for Additional Water Supply in the Lower Rio Grande

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This process review is especially timely, inasmuch as the weather patterns of many coastal and
near-coastal areas of the U.S .A. are changing perceptibly, causing not only severe drought in the
LRGV, but also having a progressively depressive effect on surface water quality. These
decreases in water quality cause a plenitude of associated problems, from the obvious ones such
as fouling and scaling of lines to the not so obvious ones of excessive soil leaching during flash
floods, contributing to appreciably increased salinities in, for instance, the waters of the Lower
Rio Grande River.
States such as Florida and California also count in the roster of States now accelerating efforts
to tap desalination technology to supplement water supplies in these times. This interest, belated
though it characteristically is, is being fed by population growth in booming areas such as those
in the South and West that are seriously behind in their water resource development programs.
Some are of the opinion that even the Northeast and other more developed, water-rich areas may
need their own desalination plants within the next 5 to 15 years.
Yet, the attitude persists that "if only the rains come, we would not need to spend lots of capital
building desal plants, because the water from them is going to be a lot more expensive than fresh
water from the sky!" The utilities director of San Luis Obispo in California reportedly said to
an interviewer in later 1991 that: "... we'd rather hope fur more rainfall than build a desal
plant ..." One is reminded of a 1986 meeting in the offices of the Secretary for Water and
Drainage in Mexico City, agreeing with a delegation from water-starved Monterrey, that.. "rain
dances aside, you people will have to recognize that expensive is still better than none!" In the
original Spanish: .. "mejor caro que nada!"
Several locations in Florida are at the point already where desalinated water costs are competitive
with conventional water supply sources, largely due to the fact that a series of rate increases has
placed the cities in a position of having to pay up to $2.50 per 1,000 gallons or literally go
without. Add to that the fact that communities such as Mount Pleasant, S.C. and Suffolk, V.A.
had to go to desalination in order to rectify the unacceptable salinity levels in their well water,
and the pervasiveness of this problem becomes more and more evident. Texas and, particularly
the LRGV, has a unique opportunity to forestall such dire circumstances and undertake a sound
and far-sighted program to develop a plentiful and independent source of water, both shallow and
deep, for its long-term future.