Water Crisis: Top 5 Cases of Infrastructure Investment for Water Security

The cities might be on different continents, but they share the same challenge: ensuring that their people have enough water to go about their business. Or, as RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan U.S. research organization, describes it in its latest report: ensuring that they have water security.

In the report – aptly entitled “Learning from Crises to Build Urban Water Security” – RAND Corporation looks at how five cities dealt with the challenges posed by prolonged periods of water crisis and water scarsity.

The cities are Cape Town, Melbourne, São Paulo, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. For some of them, the water emergency lasted more than a decade. In the case of Las Vegas, it endured for more than two decades.

The causes of water crisis were the same as those faced by countless other cities: a warming climate, growing populations, and aging water infrastructure.

“Many cities are—or will be—facing serious threats to their ability to maintain or enhance the level of service they can provide and ensure the long-term resilience of their water supplies,” reads the report, citing another study that projects nearly half of the global urban population facing water scarcity by 2050.

The water shortages faced by the five cities give an indication of what can be expected in the future.

In Cape Town, for example, water reservoirs plunged from 100 percent capacity to 38 percent in four years, while New Orleans saw saltwater from the Gulf go up the Mississippi River due to a slower flow of fresh water downstream. With its key water levels falling below five percent capacity, São Paulo was forced to draw water at the very bottom that was not usually considered available for use.

Among the lessons learned: plan and invest in water infrastructure for the long term; encourage collaboration among all levels of government as well as non-government organizations to address the problem collectively; build trust and communication with residents to reduce water consumption; and, finally, embrace innovation.

“Innovation, and the creativity behind it, is a central component of building urban water security and responding effectively to water supply crises,” the report explains. “The importance of innovation and experimenting with new ways of doing things was a central lesson from our case study cities.”

RAND Corporation refers to how Las Vegas adopted a variety of solutions to manage the challenges posed by perennial water shortages, including Intake 3.

Commissioned by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Webuild Group excavated a 4.6-kilometer-long tunnel under Lake Mead, the artificial lake that supplies water to the city.

Conducted under extreme conditions, the project was an engineering challenge. The tunnel-boring machine was a unique prototype, designed to withstand 15 bar – an air pressure unmatched in the industry’s history. The water intake at the end of the tunnel was fixed about 100 meters below the surface of Lake Mead. The water, drawn in from the bottom of the water reservoir through the intake, was then directed through the tunnel to an access shaft on the shore, and then pumped to a water treatment plant.

Meanwhile, Melbourne had a desalination plant built to ensure access to potable water.

Cape Town extended its use of sensors to better monitor water pressure throughout its water infrastructure network.

“Building water security is not a task solely for extreme cases nor is it something that can be effectively achieved during a water emergency,” says the report. “For cities confronting a changing climate and dynamic decision-making environment, urban water security can be defined as the ability to avoid a crisis or the condition of being prepared to respond effectively to one.

“Urban water security can often be bolstered by demand management and interconnecting water systems, including water recycling and reuse, creating water supply assets from stormwater management, matching water quality to end-use needs, and achieving environmental goals through multipurpose, multi-benefit infrastructure. These strategies often produce co-benefits and require strong collaboration between decisionmakers, residents, and other partners.”

One area where water security is always a highly relevant issue is the Arabian Peninsula. Here, Webuild, through its subsidiary Fisia Italimpianti, has built desalination plants and water treatment facilities in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, characterized by innovative technological solutions and a presence in the region for over thirty years.

Among the desalination plants, Jebel Ali M is one of the icons in the desalination sector and was the largest plant in the United Arab Emirates at the time of its completion (2012). Capable of generating 636,400 cubic meters of water per day (equivalent to 140 MIGD), in 2014 the plant was named “Desalination Plant of the Year” by the Global Water Awards, which recognizes the most significant achievements in the international desalination industry.

In Saudi Arabia, the Shoaiba 3 Expansion II project was completed. Located in the Shoaiba area on the country’s western coast, the plant uses reverse osmosis technology and produces 250,000 m³/day, providing drinking water to over 1 million residents of the cities of Mecca, Jeddah, and Taif.

Finally, in Oman, there is the Salalah Independent Water Project, a reverse osmosis desalination plant with a capacity of 113,650 m³/day, supplying drinking water to the city of Salalah in the southwest of the country.