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Time to invest in desalination?

Monday, March 22 was World Water Day. It was not marked around our area, in our province, or in the whole country for that matter, not even without fanfare.

Monday, March 22 was World Water Day.

It was not marked around our area, in our province, or in the whole country for that matter, not even without fanfare.

This perfectly fits with the findings of a recent survey that says Canadians, for some reason, are much more concerned with saving energy than with saving water.

Should we be surprised? Not at all.

Canada is the richest country in the world in terms of fresh water resources and our nation will likely keep this status for several decades to come.

Actually, there is so much of it that, if we can get permission, we push some underground to take the oil out.

“There is an obvious disconnect between Canadians’ attitudes towards water conservation and what they’re actually doing,” says leading water expert Bob Sandford, chair, Canadian Partnership Initiative of the United Nations Water for Life Decade.

“Canadians say they are much more concerned about the availability and quantity of fresh water than any other natural resource, yet their efforts to conserve water are actually decreasing. This should be a huge concern, given that we live in a society run by water and the long-term supply of this precious resource is already at risk in many parts of the country.”

Overly alarmist? Maybe.

After all, even if our fresh water resources dry up, being located between two oceans, we can easily follow the example of the city of Sydney, Australia to resolve the problem.

There they have built the biggest desalination plant on earth, rendered sea water fit to drink, and in huge quantities: The capacity of the plant is 2.5 million liters per day, enough to fill 600 Olympic size swimming pools. And it doesn’t end there: The facility has been constructed in such a away that its capacity can be doubled or tripled within only three years.

As more and more rivers and lakes dry up thanks to global warming, desalination plants are likely to become very profitable businesses, so it might be prudent to start to buy shares of companies doing that line of business.

Down the road, say in three decades, littoral countries can even start to make money by selling desalinated water to landlocked countries.

Wouldn’t you think that this is a great formula to make all those fear-mongering scientists, environmental activists, international panels shut up and go home?

What else would you expect: Investors in the desalination companies win, littoral countries win and the only loser in this case are the peoples of landlocked states, but what can you do? You can’t make everybody happy, can you?

Oh, about upsetting of the balance of the nature, dying agriculture and possibility of wars because of water shortages?

Well, somebody else has to think about resolving those problems.

- Mustafa Eric