Drinking the Sea: The United States, the Middle East, and the Globalization of Desalination Technology

In an era defined by global climate change and water scarcity, in recent years the American media has been filled with increasingly dire reports of California’s looming water crisis. Despite optimistic visions of desalination saving California’s cities from drought, previous projects in both California and Florida have suffered through engineering and budget debacles as well as withering criticism from environmental activists.
Desalination’s globalization was an outgrowth of American Cold War research and development. In the 1950s the U.S. government established the Office of Saline Water. Desalination was tailor-made for the technological futurism of the era. Like the space race it was framed as a potential military advantage. Like the Peace Corps, it was seen as a tool for the advancement of American modernizing development abroad. By 1970, desalination had become an integral part of diplomacy and technical aid, especially in the Middle East. Just as American-sponsored projects were taking off abroad, however, the Arab oil embargo of 1973 struck a death knell to American desalination. Congress deemed desalination too expensive and slashed funding by 90 percent. Thus, subsequent advances in desalination technologies moved into the private sector and to government and university laboratories in Europe, Asia, and the oil-rich Gulf.
With the opening of the Western Hemisphere’s largest desalination facility in suburban San Diego in 2015, it is worth considering how the U.S. slipped from the vanguard of desalination to a laggard. A better understanding of this history will inform the difficult choices posed by its return. Does desalination represent an inevitable part of the future’s hydraulic landscape or an unsustainable infrastructural trap? And even if large-scale desalination is fiscally viable, are the energy requirements and environmental impacts sustainable?