Editor:
The surface of our planet is 506 X 106 km2 and oceans take up 356 X 106 km2 leaving us (humans, animals, trees, grasses, and food life) plus desert and lakes and mountains for the 150 X 106 km2.
We obtain ocean water from the sun via evaporation, and we consider it the main source of our water. We take water from the rivers and lakes and from beneath the soil by digging wells.
However, there is another way of obtaining water and that is by desalination. The problem with that is “what to do with the salt” and there is a small company in Quebec that has the solution. It puts the desalination plant in the oceans: It has a filter at the inlet and a pump to bring the water to the plant then a 70-bar pump to the reverse osmosis filter and half of the filtered water is combined with the brine and sent back to the ocean while the other half is sent to the land at a tank. The 70-bar pump uses a lot of electricity but we in B.C. obtain clean energy from BC Hydro.
We are not an island but still we have 3 ½ sides surrounded by oceans, so why not obtain a few of these plants? We have about 30,000 people in the area and need to have much more farming done.
Patrick Carron, Halfmoon Bay
