Where can i get brackish water

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Advanced search A-Z Glossary. Error Cookies are not enabled. You must enable cookies before you can log in. But as the cost of desalination has decreased and freshwater resources have become radically depleted, many decision-makers are giving the desalination of brackish water a second look.

Brackish water is, after all, significantly easier to desalinate than seawater. Salinity is the level of salt in water , and it is determined by measuring the total dissolved solids TDS through evaporation and weighing or with a more convenient but less accurate electrical conductivity EC test, which measures how easily electric current passes through the through the water.

Salt in brackish water is not just sodium chloride. Other compounds that may occur in brackish water include:. The U. Geological Survey USGS , however, defines water salinity without a specific designation for brackish water:. The Texas Tribune explained :.

Hundreds of trillions of gallons of brackish water are estimated to lie underneath Texas. Whatever the definition, there is a great amount of salty water worldwide that cannot be used without desalination. According to the USGS , very salty groundwater abounds in the western United States, perhaps leftover from ancient seas or from contact with soluble minerals in the ground.

In New Mexico, about three-quarters of all groundwater is too salty to be used for most purposes without treatment. Research has shown that much more groundwater is brackish than previously believed.

In , Ferguson et al reported that transitions in aquifers — from the higher freshwater zones to the lower, more saline zones — are much closer to the surface than surmised. That means deeper drilling is not the option that many have counted on.

These bodies of water are known and referred to as estuaries. Sources for brackish water can be made by man and often are. Large pools and small streams can and often do result from construction projects such as the construction of dikes and the intentional flooding of marshlands to produce bodies of brackish water for freshwater prawn farming. Advanced water treatment technologies are needed for the purifying and desalinating to make these water sources safe for human consumption.