In Search of a Drought-Proof Source - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 292

entail further complications. As landlocked states, Arizona and Nevada intend to build
a nuclear-powered facility on the Mexican coast, which would add diplomatic, trade-
pact, and environmental considerations. (Freshwater created by the plant would be used
in Mexico, in exchange for giving the states greater use of Colorado River water.)
“At the end of the day we will use desalters, but they will only be one tool in the tool-
box,” Mulroy concedes, in what has become a common refrain.
The growing need for freshwater and the rising costs of procuring it from distant
sources has raised the stakes for desal. In 2008, according to the WallStreetJournal,
13,080 desalination plants around the world produced some 12 billion gallons of water
a day. Even some longtime critics have been won over. “Ten years ago desalination was
the crazy aunt in the attic. That's changed. It is now entering the mainstream and being
taken seriously,” NRDC's Barry Nelson said in 2003.
Desal has yet to gain wide acceptance, but the technology is being refined and
costs are dropping. This has led some of the nation's leading companies, such as the
computer-chip-maker Intel, to aggressively pursue desal as a viable alternative to water
imported from the overextended Colorado River and Sacramento Delta. To those who
can afford it, then, desalination provides a relatively “drought-proof” (if not entirely
green) source of freshwater.
A GLIMPSE OF A WATER-SMART FUTURE
For many years, Intel was so focused on creating the world's smallest, fastest micro-
processors and building its presence in the global marketplace, that the company didn't
pay close attention to the impact its chip manufacturing had on the environment. In-
tel is responsible for three Superfund sites in California , and the company has faced
messy public opposition in New Mexico , where state regulators cited Intel for violations
of wastewater and air-emissions-equipment rules, and residents worried that its chip-
making plants were using millions of gallons of water while impacting air quality and
the fragile desert ecosystem near Albuquerque. In the early 2000s, Intel built two new
“fabs,” or semiconductor fabrication plants, Fab 12 and Fab 22, in a place even hotter
and drier than New Mexico: Chandler, Arizona, next door to Phoenix. Then, in late
2007, the company opened a “mega-fab” in Chandler, Fab 32 , which cost $3 billion to
build and is a state-of-the-art facility: it recycles or stores about 75 percent of the water
it uses and is among the most water-efficient plants in the company's global operations.