Reported By: Rob Hughes (rhughes@kswt.com)
Yuma, AZ November 10- The Yuma Desalting Plant is joining the battle against the longest drought in the last 100 years. After being inactive for two years, the plant is back in action at a crucial time.
The Yuma Desalting Plant is one of the largest in the world. It's received millions in state and federal money to conduct a one year pilot test run, beginning in May 2010. Now the eyes of experts nationwide are focused on Yuma to solve a drought that refuses to go away.
The Desert Southwest has been fighting a severe drought since 2000.
"As the drought continues, we see the salinity of our water supply increase; we don't have the rains that are sweetening the water and refreshing it, as they have in the past," said Jennifer McCloskey, Area Manager with the Yuma Desalting Plant.
McCloskey says the plant's one year pilot test run will provide valuable information about it's ability to produce water that could be used for several purposes. "It's going to bring an important water supply in the current drought that we're all facing here in the Southwest; not only that, however; just being able to look at this asset well into the future," said McCloskey. The run will also study how to conserve water from Lake Mead, and utilize the Colorado River's water supply.
"It's going to bring some jobs that we'll be making available here locally for the operations; but we also have our stimulus dollars; we're working on quite a number of contracts to work on the local infrastructure," said McCloskey.
In the meantime, officials are busy preparing to help find the answers to this difficult problem.
"We're very busy hiring some additional personnel to run those operations, as well as getting several of the processes online here at the plant; we're doing some testing, loading our membranes, our reverse osmosis membranes; so many activities are taking place between now and May of 2010," said McCloskey.
For more information on the project, visit the United States Bureau of Reclamation website at www.usbr.gov.
Mccloskey says the pilot run will use 9.4 billion gallons of water, enough to supply approximately 70,000 families for one year, and will also bring jobs to the local economy.
Kidnap Arrest