WATER TECHNOLOGY

GROWING BANANAS IN TEXAS DESPITE WATER SCARCITY?

Water management skills and desalinization technology from Israel can one day help transform water scarcity in Texas to a reliable annual abundance.

Helping global and Texas-based clients anticipate and respond to unexpected institutional crises is at the core of what our strategic communications agency does. Over the years we have seen issues of every shape and size, and one crisis we see on the horizon for Texas and Texas business is the lack of water—a looming scarcity we have not seen in decades.

Fortunately, a safe and prosperous future can be secured if we learn from the past, and a long-standing trading partner in the Middle East.

CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION

Recently, I helped guide a technology-discovery trip to an ancient center of innovation and change—Israel—where major empires and trade routes have perennially crossed and clashed, and survival was dependent upon the availability of water. Even in their darkest moments—we were visiting near the ancient cities of Caesarea and Haifa—these civilizations still traded ideas and found common ground in which to advance.

We toured the ancient site of Tel Megiddo, a strategically important and much contested area at an intersection of commerce and empires. While the city’s geography and fortifications provided an impenetrable defense against invaders, the lack of a water supply inside the walls would render it powerless to a sustained siege. As historian Robert S. Lemon wrote in his 1935 paper on the Megiddo water system, “A water supply inside the walls was very nearly as important as the wall itself.”

To secure an internal water supply, a shaft 186 stairs deep and dug through limestone bedrock, connected via a 230-foot long tunnel to a nearby spring. The tunnel was cut on a slight incline so the water would flow from the spring to the bottom of the shaft and the inhabitants could draw water while standing at the top. This great endeavor ensured the survival of the city by ensuring water supplies were available when the city was under siege.

You may know this site by its more common name: Armageddon.

It is upon this cultural foundation, this appreciation for the importance of water to the survival of a city and a nation, that the State of Israel has led a water revolution. It is a wonderment to the world that Israel, which nestles against one of the world’s greatest and driest desert landscapes is, nonetheless, a water superpower.

Today, water conservation and management is part of daily life for everyday Israelis. From limiting leakage from water systems to farming efficiency, recycling waste water, desalinization, aquifer storage, and even oil and gas industry water efficiency, Israel is the global leader in water management.

Our principal clients along the trip were industrial leaders from Texas who recognize water is critical to the economic

Reservoirs of desalinated seawater in Eilat, Israel

vitality of the state and to the continued operations of their business enterprise. They see a crisis on the horizon that must be addressed today. As such, we were there to learn.

TEXAS CIVILIZATION

Texas is always thirsty. Every Texan knows hydrocarbon recovery is a major user of water resources in our state and also knows how important agriculture is in the state. Recently, Texans have also become more aware of the need for water in the manufacture of critical microchips for our national industries and defense. As our state and economy grow, so do our water demands.

BRINGING DESALINIZATION HOME

I and my group were aware of the success the county of San Diego had in stepping away from the continued drought hysteria that afflicts California annually by installing a huge desalinization plant along the coast. That coast-hugging plant now supplies a critical 10 percent of the water used across the county and plant managers have ambitious goals for more.

The desalinization technology used in San Diego comes from Israel, and we were headed on our trip across the Atlantic to meet the Israeli technologists behind that miracle. The first indication that the forces of nature were in abeyance in Northern Israel was our sighting of vast but healthy water-hungry tropical banana crops—but how? We were far from the Tropics.

Israel has no fewer than 31 desalinization plants treating nearly one million cubic meters of seawater and brackish water every day. That water is used to broker peace—Israel supplies water to both Egypt and Jordan—and grow bananas.

But we also discovered Israel’s broad success is far more dependent on its conscious centralized management of all existing water resources. Taking the salt out of Mediterranean waves and brackish inland waters is just a part of the achievement.

While we here in Texas and the great Southwestern desert states romanticize the private ownership of natural resources, from oil and gas to water, that maze of property rights confuses any attempt to uniformly and fairly manage the water we do have. Israel, on the other hand, treats all its water, natural and waste, as public property. And virtually every Israeli one encounters knows the source, desalinization, and takes great pride in the national appreciation for water resource conservation and management. I don’t advocate government taking, but I do advise cooperation and collaboration for the greater good, and instilling a sense of Texas pride in our resilient ability to overcome the water challenges ahead.

We learned from our source in Israel that taking impurities out of water works magnificently. But judicious and creative management of all that nation’s water sources is required to meet the demands of Israel’s nine million people, supplying an astounding 1.6 billion cubic meters of waters to homes, fields, and factories every year.

Texas now has three times Israel’s population. We came home convinced that a mix of new technologies and established public-management techniques applied right here in Texas can transform our state’s environment of water scarcity and deliver an efficient abundance satisfactory for all uses. I am also convinced that Texas, her elected leadership and business leadership must collectively mass the political will to bring about a Texas—or at least a Central Texas—water revolution. If we do, we might even have enough water left over to one day grow and harvest… bananas!

THOMAS GRAHAM is the founder of Crosswind Media & Public Relations. Thomas has been privileged to develop strategies for some of the world’s most familiar brands, to direct communications during highest-profile crises and reorganization, and to prepare high-profile senior executives at Fortune 500 companies for media interviews, investor and analyst round table discussions, and presentations before major external and internal meetings.