To keep away from a water disaster, Texas might wager large on desalination. Right here’s the way it works in El Paso.

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This text is a part of Operating Out, an occasional sequence about Texas’ water disaster. Learn extra tales in regards to the threats going through Texas’ water provide right here.

EL PASO — The wind swept via El Paso at some point in March, lifting a superb layer of mud that settled onto windshields, garments and pores and skin. The air was thick with haze from a mud storm. This border metropolis, perched on the sting of the Chihuahuan Desert, receives on common much less than 9 inches of rain every year.

Water within the metropolis of 679,000 folks is a problem.

Inside El Paso’s Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant, Hector Sepúlveda, the plant’s superintendent, walks via rows of towering metal tubes as a loud hum vibrates via the air. This equipment is important to offering hundreds within the metropolis with clear water.

“This is a desert community,” Sepúlveda stated. “So the water utilities have to always think ahead and be very resourceful and very smart and find resources to take the water that we do have here and provide for a desert community.”

Sepúlveda says the town’s dry local weather, compounded by dwindling floor and floor water provides and local weather change has made innovation important. A key piece of that technique is desalination — the method of eradicating salt and different minerals from seawater or salty groundwater so folks can drink it.

When it opened in 2007, El Paso’s desalination plant was the most important inland desalination facility on the planet. It was constructed via a partnership between El Paso Water and Fort Bliss, one of many nation’s largest army bases, when water shortages threatened the bottom’s operations. At present, at max capability the plant can provide as much as 27.5 million gallons per day — serving to stretch the town’s provide by making use of the area’s abundance of brackish groundwater, salty groundwater with salinity ranges greater than freshwater, however decrease than seawater.

Town desires to develop the plant’s capability to 33.5 million gallons per day by 2028. El Pasoans used about 105 million gallons per day final 12 months.

As Texas faces twin pressures of inhabitants development and extended drought, lawmakers want to desalination as a manner ahead. The Texas Legislature took a significant step in 2023, creating the New Water Provide for Texas Fund, to help desalination initiatives — together with each brackish and seawater. This legislative session, lawmakers are pushing to speed up that effort with a invoice by state Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, that might dedicate tens of millions for brand spanking new water initiatives, together with desalination. Senate Invoice 7 cleared the higher chamber earlier this month and is now awaiting a Home committee’s consideration.

“We’ve developed all the cheap water, and all the low-hanging fruit has been obtained. There is no more of it, and it’s depleting what’s left. We’re going into the second phase of water development through brackish marine, brackish produced water and brackish aquifers,” Perry stated on the Senate flooring earlier than his colleagues gave the laws unanimous approval.

Sixty municipal water desalination services are already on-line, in line with the Texas Water Improvement Board, the state company that helps handle and finance water provide initiatives. Of these, 43 desalinate brackish groundwater. El Paso’s is the most important.

As of December 2024, the company had designated 31 brackish groundwater websites as manufacturing zones, which means they’ve average to excessive availability of brackish groundwater to deal with. The board’s 2022 state water plan proposes implementing an extra 37 brackish groundwater desalination initiatives in South Texas cities like McAllen, Mission, San Benito; and West Texas cities like Abilene and Midland.

The plan states that if all beneficial methods are used, groundwater desalination may make up about 2.1% of the state’s projected water wants by producing 157,000 acre-feet per 12 months by 2070 — sufficient to help 942,000 Texans for one 12 months.

Nonetheless, desalination isn’t with out tradeoffs. The know-how takes a number of vitality, and building prices will be steep. There are additionally a number of components to contemplate that have an effect on the ultimate price ticket: How deep the water lies, how salty it’s, how far it must journey, and find out how to get rid of the leftover salty waste.

The water board estimates treating brackish groundwater can run wherever from $357 to $782 per acre-foot, whereas seawater desalination ranges from $800 to $1,400. Lawmakers say water funding at a state-level is crucial to assist communities shoulder the upfront prices of those different water provides.

How brackish groundwater desalination works

Sepúlveda, who has spent greater than 30 years with El Paso Water, says the method on the desalination plant begins with brackish groundwater drawn from 15 wells close to the El Paso Worldwide Airport. The salty water is transported to the plant the place it’s first filtered via strainers to take away sand particles. Then it’s transported via cartridge filters. This course of is just like how family water filters work, however way more environment friendly.

The cartridge filters lure superb sediments smaller than a strand of hair, additional filtering the water earlier than it reaches the center of the system: reverse osmosis, sometimes called RO membranes.

Sepúlveda, who wears a blue building hat and highlighter yellow vest, stands amid a room stuffed with lengthy rows of stacked metal tubes, or RO membrane models. Right here, brackish groundwater will get become contemporary, drinkable water. It’s pumped via these tubes — every with 72 vessels — at extraordinarily excessive strain, forsaking salt and micro organism.

“We’re separating the undesirable stuff from the potable water,” he stated, as he opened a faucet and sipped the water. “At the end you end up with safe drinking water. The process is just amazing.”

As soon as cleaned, the water is split between El Paso Water clients and Fort Bliss. Sepúlveda stated they are going to quickly develop the plant to supply 33.5 million gallons per day by including a sixth row of RO membranes.

The brine, or concentrated salty water left over from the method, is pumped 22 miles to deep nicely injection websites. The desal plant can separate as much as 3 million gallons of brine a day. On the website, the focus is distributed 3,500 toes underground right into a fractured rock formation.

Considerations of desalination

Whereas brackish groundwater desalination has confirmed to be a viable answer for inland communities like El Paso, environmentalists are elevating considerations in regards to the potential penalties of scaling up the water technique.

Seawater desalination is gaining consideration as Gulf Coast cities like Corpus Christi begin growing their very own seawater desalination facility.

For seawater desalination, Shane Walker, professor and director of a water analysis heart at Texas Tech College, says the principle concern is eradicating the surplus salt. Whereas many of the salinity comes from dissolved minerals that aren’t dangerous, Walker says, excessive concentrations — consider over-salted French fries — can hurt marine life and disrupt coastal ecosystems.

Seawater is far saltier than brackish water and salt ranges fluctuate extensively relying on the supply.

In seawater desalination, the brine byproduct — which will be twice as salty as seawater — is usually discharged again into the ocean. If not correctly managed, this will enhance salinity in bays and estuaries, threatening species like oysters, crabs and shrimp which can be crucial to native fisheries and ecosystems.

Myron Hess, an environmental marketing consultant for the nonprofit Nationwide Wildlife Federation, stated that when crops absorb water it may doubtlessly suck in marine creatures with the ocean water.

“As you’re diverting particularly massive amounts of water, you can be pulling in lots of organisms,” Hess stated.

For inland services just like the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant, the environmental considerations are completely different. They don’t kill marine life, however disposal remains to be a priority.

In El Paso, Artwork Ruiz, chief plant supervisor for El Paso Water and the previous superintendent of the utility’s desalination plant, calls this disposal “chemistry salts” and says that disposal is dealt with via deep nicely injection into an remoted a part of the aquifer. Ruiz stated El Paso is blessed with a geological formation that has a pure fault that forestalls the focus from migrating and contaminating the freshwater provide. In areas the place this isn’t possible, evaporation ponds are used, however they require giant quantities of land and cautious administration to forestall environmental hazards.

“Deep well injection is a common method used for larger desalination facilities, but the geology has to be right,” Walker stated. “You have to ensure that the injection site is isolated and won’t contaminate freshwater aquifers.”

One other concern raised by water consultants is how Texas manages brackish groundwater and whether or not the state is doing sufficient to guard close by freshwater sources. Senate Invoice 2658 proposes to exempt sure brackish groundwater wells situated inside state-designated manufacturing zones from needing a allow. Consultants say the transfer would bypass a allowing course of within the state’s water code that was particularly designed to safeguard freshwater aquifers.

The central fear is that brackish and contemporary groundwater are sometimes hydrologically linked. Whereas brackish groundwater will be an essential a part of the state’s water portfolio, Vanessa Puig-Williams, a water professional with the Environmental Protection Fund, says there’s an actual danger that pumping brackish water may unintentionally begin drawing in and depleting close by contemporary water if oversight isn’t required from native groundwater conservation districts.

Consultants additionally warning that the manufacturing zones recognized by the water board weren’t designed to information site-specific choices, akin to how a lot a nicely can safely pump or whether or not it may have an effect on close by freshwater provides.

Hess, consulting for the Nationwide Wildlife Federation, authored a paper on the impacts of desalination, together with the value tag. Developing a facility is dear, as is the vitality it takes to run it. El Paso’s desalination facility value $98.3 million, together with the manufacturing and injection wells building, $26 million of which it acquired in federal funding.

The know-how to scrub the water is vitality intensive. Desalinating water in El Paso prices about $500 per acre-foot of water — 46% greater than treating floor water from a river. Seawater services require much more vitality, which provides to the prices in producing or cleansing the water. TWDB estimates these vary from $800 to $1,400 per acre-foot.

Texas has no working seawater desalination crops for municipal use, however the state’s environmental company, Texas Fee on Environmental High quality, has licensed permits for 2 marine desalination services and has 4 pending functions for seawater desalination services, three in Corpus Christi and one in Port Isabel.

“The first seawater plant in Texas is going to be expensive,” Walker stated. “The first time somebody does something, it’s going to cost way more than the other ones that come along behind it, because we’re having to figure out all the processes and procedures to do it the first time.”

Classes from El Paso and the trail ahead

Again on the Kay Bailey Hutchison plant in El Paso, Sepúlveda, the plant’s superintendent, walks right into a lab opened to college students and professors from the College of Texas at El Paso, New Mexico State College, and Rice College to check new applied sciences to assist refine the desalination processes or prolong the lifespan of RO membranes.

Sepúlveda stated water utility workers have realized rather a lot since 2007 when the plant first opened. RO membranes, used to scrub the salty water, value wherever from $600 to $800. El Paso makes use of 360 RO membranes to run its plant. To increase the life from 5 to 12 years, utility workers found out a system by checking salinity ranges earlier than extracting from a sure nicely.

“When we first bring water in from the brackish wells, we know how salty each well is, so we try to bring in the wells that are less salty to not put the membranes under such stress,” he stated. “It almost doubled the life of the membrane.”

He added that this system can also be serving to plant operators scale back vitality consumption. Plant operators have adjusted salinity ranges by mixing the brackish groundwater with much less salty water, which helps stop pipe corrosion and clogging.

Their pipes are additionally now winterized. After the 2011 freeze, El Paso upgraded insulation and put in warmth tape to guard tools.

As Texas strikes ahead with extra desalination initiatives, Sepúlveda stated the teachings from El Paso might be crucial as extra crops go browsing.

“You always have to be forward-thinking. Always have to be innovative,” he stated, because the machines buzzed within the background. “You always have to be on top of the latest technological improvements to be able to extract water from whatever scant resources you have.”

Disclosure: Environmental Protection Fund, Rice College, Texas Tech College and College of Texas at El Paso have been monetary supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan information group that’s funded partly by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Monetary supporters play no position within the Tribune’s journalism. Discover a full record of them right here.

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