Onward with desalination

It, indeed, is heartening to learn from a Recorder Report of the prospect of an acute water crisis in SITE area of Karachi ending with the completion of a 20 million gallon daily (MGD) desalination water project.
According to Site Association of Industry (SAI) the proposal, submitted by an American firm for the supply of 20-MGD desalinated water to the SITE Limited has been, accepted, in principle, by the Sindh provincial government.
Nordicom International, Islamabad, in association with Provital International Inc, of USA, would install 20 MGD desalination plant at Hawkesbay, on the land provided by the Karachi Port Trust. As such, the Provital International would lay the main pipeline from the plant to SITE Post Office at their cost and responsibility. It is re-assuring to note that desalinated water would conform to WHO quality standard.
SITE Limited stands committed for the purchase of this water at Rs 111.00 for 1000 imperial gallons for a period of 30 years for onward distribution among its tenants. Notably, as the project is marked for completion within a year, it will be widely welcomed by the SITE industrial units and others benefiting from it, as a dream come true.
Viewed in the perspective of the Defence Housing Authority's grand, state-of-the-art desalinated water project, it will appear that intensification of the thrust for water-deficient areas from a well-planned approach came ahead of the strategy proposed by the Fourth World Water Forum, held in Mexico, in 2006, with a declaration setting, for the first time ever, a key role for local governments in providing water to desperately dry communities, with decentralisation of water supply management.
The documents then signed by the participants from 140 countries, and underlined the vital role that legislators and local authorities in various countries have to play to developing sustained access to water and sewage services, stopped short of declaring a universal right to the precious resource of which two thirds of humanity face uncertain supplies.
However, they had reportedly kept the hope alive of improving water distribution, and eradicating waste, so as to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015.
Speaking as the chief guest at the groundbreaking ceremony of power supply and desalination plant of the Defence Housing Authority, in Karachi, in August, 2004, President General Pervez Musharraf had made a pointed reference to the Authority's efforts for improvement in the dilapidated infrastructure facilities in parts of the long battered megalopolis.
As for its power supply and desalination project, involving an investment of $100 million, it would be no exaggeration to say that the two projects marked the beginning of answers to people's prayers of long years. For the Authority had expressed the hope that in the next two years it would be able to help redress Karachi's power shortage by 94 MW and water shortage in DHA by three MGD.
Now that local governments and various non-government organisations have joined hands in the big effort, from a common approach, this newspaper will have the satisfaction that its decades long campaigning for desalination as an effective means of meeting the worsening water scarcity has started bearing fruit.