A Last Resort: Advantages and Disadvantages of Desalination in the U.S
As of April 2026, Lake Mead on the Colorado River is under 35% capacity, the lowest since 2022. Photo by RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images.
CEE Distinguished Professor Auroop Ganguly and others discuss the current megadrought state of the U.S and the possibility of investing in desalination as a next step.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cyrus Moulton.
The Colorado River is running dry. Is desalination the solution?
As a megadrought and demands for irrigation and drinking water have reduced parts of the Colorado River to a trickle, water from a desalination plant in California is being proposed as part of a solution.
Northeastern University hydrology experts said that desalination, the process of removing salts and other minerals from water so it can be used by humans, will solve the river’s -and the western United States’ – water woes alone, however…at least not yet.
“Desalination works and has to work in some cases where we’re talking about societal collapse if you don’t get that water,” said Auroop Ganguly, distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern. “We are probably not there yet for the Western U.S. to take that leap.”
The hottest and driest period in the last 1,500 years has reduced the Colorado River’s flow by 20% since 2000 compared with average flows in the previous century, according to the nonprofit Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
This megadrought combined with the lowest winter snowpack on record to reduce the 1,400-mile-long river, and the 250,000-square-mile river basin containing its tributaries, to approximately 36% of its storage capacity, the Bureau of Reclamation said in April. The bureau, which builds and manages water projects in the Western U.S., said these two factors have created “elevated risks to essential water and power infrastructure that supply water to more than 40 million people,” in the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
Earlier this month, however, a potential solution was proposed when the bureau and agencies in California, Nevada and Arizona signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the San Diego County Water Authority to sell some of its water rights to the Colorado River to the inland states, because the utility has surplus water supplies from a desalination plant.
Desalinated water wouldn’t physically move inland under the proposed agreement, but the utility wouldn’t draw as much from the Colorado River as it’s entitled to because of its excess desalinated capacity. The amount of water to be sold, and its price, has yet to be agreed upon, according to the MOU.
“Next-generation strategies in the face of climate volatility must include interstate partnerships that deliver water where it’s needed most,” said Dan Denham, general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority. “New ideas are challenging to implement, but it’s in everyone’s best interest to make this work.”
The hottest and driest period in the last 1,500 years has reduced the Colorado River’s flow by 20% since 2000 compared with average flows in the previous century, according to the nonprofit Environmental and Energy Study Institute.
Auroop Ganguly, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University says drought is a “slow-moving problem.” Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Ganguly, who has visited Israel to study the country’s extensive desalination infrastructure, said there are three major problems with desalination as a panacea for the Western U.S.
Read the full article on Northeastern Global News