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Compared to the ecological disaster that diverting so much water from the California delta has and continues to cause, the effects of the marine environment will be minor.
My cousin is an engineer on the de-sal project in Sydney, Au. He has worked all over the world, and we lag far behind all the other countries. It is pretty amazing technology. In Sydney, the by-product brine water is combined with treated wastewater to dilute the saltiness and then pumped offshore and released in a manner so that the salinity difference is undetectable 100-200 feet away from the outlet, depending on the tides. The intake velocity is less than 0.1 mps so most organisms can swim away from it. Lawrence Livermore Labs is working on carbon nanotube technology which will greatly increase the ability to remove salt vs. reverse osmosis process, with lower energy use, making it more cost effective.
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