A Texas A&M University X-Grant Project

Desalination and Water Reuse in the 21st Century

  • Texas

    El Paso El Paso is a city of more than 600,000 people on the Mexican border and it shares both the Rio Grande River and groundwater with Ciudad Juárez in Mexico. It only receives an average of 10 inches of…

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  • California

    San Diego Desalination The nation’s largest seawater desalination plant opened in Carlsbad, California, ten miles from San Diego. The Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant is capable of producing 50 million gallons of freshwater per day using reverse osmosis technology.…

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  • Australia

    Perth is the fourth-largest city in Australia at 2 million people, and experienced more than 28% population growth between 2006 and 2016. It’s the capital and largest city of Western Australia.  Water Corporation is the principal supplier of water, wastewater…

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  • Israel

    Israel’s water is managed nationally by Mekorot Water, a government owned corporation that deals with the management, production and supply of water, effluent reclamation, and brackish water desalination. Mekorot supplies an estimated 80% of Israel’s drinking water and 70% of…

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We are an interdisciplinary team of Texas A&M faculty, researchers, and graduate students seeking to address one of the grand challenges of the 21st Century: sustainable urban water security.

About

In the face of growing populations and climate change, existing freshwater sources and water infrastructure projects are not sufficient or adequate to address the challenges of urban water insecurity.  Inadequate water delivery of acceptable water quality will increase threats to economic activities, human development, and hydrologic systems in the world’s growing urban regions. Recent studies estimate that a quarter of the world’s population living in large cities, or 381 million people, rely on water systems that are stressed. Predictions further forecast that in 2050, 993 million people will live in cities with perennial water shortage, and 3.1 billion urban residents may confront seasonal water shortages despite continued large-scale infrastructure development.

Desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater and wastewater reuse are seen as major technological interventions that can address the increased pressure on water resources in the context of growing global demand for freshwater for domestic and productive uses. While offering new sources of water, critics highlight several impediments to their sustainable implementation and negative impacts across regions and environments.

This three-year Pathways to Sustainable Urban Water Security project examines desalination and water reuse globally and across case study sites in Texas, California, Australia, and Israel. A key challenge is to identify how new technological interventions can be channeled into pathways towards sustainable water security and, in particular, to consider how anticipatory governance can be fostered to support that process. The interdisciplinary research team will examine several aspects of desalination and wastewater reuse to better understand the complex water governance regimes that promote and challenge the transformation of water-stressed urban regions.

Who funds our research…

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Pathways to Sustainable Urban Water Security is one of eight interdisciplinary research projects sharing $7 million in funding during the first round of Texas A&M University’s X-Grants program, an initiative of the 10-year, $100 million President’s Excellence Grants (X-Grant) program, which aims to unlock creative and imaginative ideas that will address issues that significantly impact the most important challenges facing global society.  For more details, visit the X-Grant program’s website (click here).