Planned Pipeline Will Bring Treated Wastewater To Drought-Stricken Southwest
As the southwestern U.S. experiences acute source-water scarcity, a major infrastructure project may soon offer relief to the region — particularly its oil and gas operations — while reducing the stress being placed on increasingly strained groundwater.
Houston-based Palisade Pipeline, a water pipeline company for oil and gas operations, is set to begin a six-month construction project that will deliver reused water to areas of Texas and New Mexico by late 2021 or early 2022. It has a deal in place to buy six million gallons of wastewater per day.
“Palisade Pipeline estimates industry freshwater demand in portions of the Permian Basin reached over 33.6 million gallons a day last year,” according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram. “The Houston-based company sees opportunity in that challenge — ways to provide water to industrial customers, while preserving the groundwater for the people and livestock whose lives depend on it. Palisade’s solution is to build a pipeline system that would deliver wastewater purchased from the city of Lubbock to customers in West Texas and New Mexico.”
The wastewater is treated in Lubbock, in northwest Texas, so Palisade won’t be conducting further treatment. Pumps along its proposed route will bring the wastewater to a reservoir in Hobbs, New Mexico.
But the pipeline could very well serve other users beyond oil and gas operations. Palisade said that it sees any company pumping groundwater in the region as its competition for the product.
“Originally Palisade marketed their wastewater to industry,” per the Albuquerque Journal. “But the company soon realized its product could also be sold to power plants and municipalities.”
The Palisade team hopes this project could preserve as much as 3 billion gallons of groundwater per year, which might reach 73 billion gallons total over the life of the project.
“Our hope is we can conserve and preserve the groundwater that people use to drink and live with,” a project lead said, according to the Reporter-Telegram. “Water drives economic stability. Without water, people can’t function, communities can’t function and ultimately communities cease to exist.”
To read more about potential solutions to growing drought, visit Water Online’s Source Water Scarcity Solutions Center.