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Ninety-eight miles north of Loya's ranch, along a perfectly flat and endless beige road that skirts the White Sands Missile Range, more desalination projects are rippling away at the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The facility, run by the Bureau of Reclamation, provides scientists with a laboratory and four springs of varying salinity to play with.
On a parched plot of land at the foot of the Sacramento Mountains, a long-standing agricultural pilot project bakes in unforgiving sunlight. After a few preemptive words about the three brine ponds on the property – “They have an interesting smell, between a zoo and the ocean” – facility manager Malynda Cappelle drives a golf cart full of visitors past solar panels and water tanks to a fenced plot of fabric and plants. Here, a team from the University of North Texas, New Mexico State University and Colorado State University has tested sunflowers, broad beans and currently 16 plots of pinto beans since 2019. Some plots are bare; others are covered with compost that increases nutrients, keeps the soil moist and provides a salt barrier. Some plots are drip-irrigated with brackish water directly from a well; some receive a mixture of desalinated/brackish water.
If you look at the plots even from a distance, the plants in the plots with the freshest water look large and healthy. But those with compost are almost as powerful, even when irrigated with brackish water. This could have significant implications for money-conscious farmers. “Maybe we do less desalination and more blending, and this will reduce costs,” says Cappelle.
Pei Xu has been a co-researcher on this project since its inception. She is also spearheading a NAWI-funded pilot project at the El Paso desalination plant. Later that day, in a high-ceilinged room next to the factory's treatment room, she shows off the resulting parts. Like Amrose's system, hers uses electrodialysis. In this case, however, Xu is trying to squeeze a little extra fresh (at least fresh) water from the plant's leftover brine. With sufficiently low salinity, the plant could route it to farmers through the province's existing canal system, turning a waste product into a valuable resource.
