A glass of Hudson River water with your meal?
Tappan Zee ice cubes?
Other communities farther upstream have been drawing from the river for drinking water for decades and the astronauts are drinking the unthinkable on the International Space Station without complaint, perhaps because no one can hear you scream in outer space. Now, water-needy Rockland County, like the astronauts and its upstream cousins, has turned its eyes to the liquid that”™s available.
United Water”™s Vice President and General Manager Michael Pointing told members of the Rockland Business Association on July 16 at IBM”™s Palisades Dolce Center that the county”™s growing population cannot rely on the sky or limited ground water for its drinking supply.
Technology, said Pointing, has trumped the tribulations of making salt water potable ”“ yes, even the murky Hudson ”“ and the company will use the latest state-of-the-art desalination techniques available to insure the spigots delivering the river”™s cleaned and de-salinated H20 will not only meet, but beat, its store-bought competition.
Ambrey Pond in Stony Point was originally sited as the location to build a reservoir, dam and “collection basin” to meet Rockland”™s growing needs. But Pointing said the strides made in desalination, factoring in the need for the water source to be continuous as well as the cost to maintain Ambrey as a primary source of drinking water, make the Haverstraw Water Supply Project the better way to go. He cited dollars and cents and long-range sense for the needs of a water-poor county.
The $80 million desalination plant, required to be operational by 2015, will cost more than $100 million less to build and in the long run, said Pointing, will provide Rockland and the company”™s Westchester customers, with a more reliable water source.
The company, said Pointing, has been waiting for more than a year since it submitted its Draft Environmental Impact Statement and environmental permit applications for approval. Under state regulations, United Water is mandated to complete its pilot studies by December.
“While it usually takes 15 years to prepare for an expansion of this nature, we are working on an extremely tight deadline,” said Pointing. “Now, due to numerous setbacks with developing Ambrey, we have less than six years to get this de-salination plant approved, built, operational and providing water.”
United calculated the cost of developing Ambrey to be $524 million and to build the desalination plant at Haverstraw $315 million. The plant would produce 2 to 2.5 million gallons of drinking water a day once operational.
When it comes to public concern over the Haverstraw project”™s proximity to Indian Point ”“ and the possibility of contamination should an accident occur at the nuclear power plant. “Since the desalination system would be monitored 24/7, any chance of an increase in picocuries that would threaten public safety would immediately be addressed by shutting the plant down and turning to other sources until the problem could be mitigated. United maintains several water sources that could be re-directed the affected communities thanks to an extensive pipeline connection.”
Rockland isn”™t the only place seeing more people coming into its rapidly built-out county. California is looking to the Pacific to supply its water needs, as are several states and counties along the oceans. “These systems are already in place in Aruba, Tampa and California, with more than 100 plants already operational in this county,” Pointing said. “And it is common on ships at sea to refilter and re-use their water and to rely on the reverse-osmosis system.”
That system, said Pointing, along with a series of carbon filters, would remove salt, pathogens and other raw materials from the water.
Pointing said the north Rockland community where the de-salination plant would be built would be the beneficiary of the tax rateables the plant would generate. Since losing the income from Lovett”™s electric plant and the reassessment of Mirant, which has sent tax bills soaring to make up the shortfall, northern Rockland can use an infusion of income.
Pointing said the project will create at least 100 construction jobs and 10-20 permanent jobs for technicians to monitor the plant once it”™s up and running.
The Haverstraw project is not without its detractors. Not only are residents hesitant at the thought of the Hudson River being its water source, but environmental groups, including Riverkeeper, have gone on record stating Rockland should find ways to curtail its population growth and conserve more water.
Pointing said while it may be a well-intentioned ideal, it”™s not practical. “People are coming to Rockland County and families are growing. You can”™t put up a gate and tell them they can”™t come in. The county is almost 100 percent built out, but its population will continue to grow. Rockland conserves more water per capita than any other part of the region,” he said, citing usage of 60 gallons per person per day on average, as opposed to 100 a day by New York City. “Whether it is because they want to keep their water costs down or are just being proactive, they are already conserving water,” said Pointing. “Now we need the help of our legislators to make this happen. As I said, the window of time in which we must complete this is getting smaller as I speak.”
New breakthroughs are being made, bearing out Pointing”™s assertion that desalination may be the way for Rockland and Westchester to go if they are to sustain life and agriculture. Science Daily reported a new desalination unit created by students at UCLA fit inside a van and was able to generate 6,000 gallons of drinking water a day from the sea, or 8,000-9,000 gallons from brackish water.