Desalination at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

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When the United States forced newly independent Cuba to permanently lease the 45 square miles the US Navy did not need to set up Desalination at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, as the site then had sources of fresh potable groundwater. Most of the western lobe of the base consists a brackish marsh that forms the mouth of the Guantanamo River. The eastern lobe is more hilly, and once had fresh water wells, still recorded in the names of structures on the base, like Cuzco Wells.

Groundwater mismanagement

O.E. Meinzer, a leading American expert in hydrogeology, visited Guantanamo in 1916 and 1925.[1] In his report he warned that the potable groundwater resources in the vicinity of the base were modest. He recommended building surface reservoirs to impound fresh water

Fresh groundwater near large bodies of salt-water has to be carefully managed. When more groundwater is drawn than is naturally replenished hydrostatic pressure forces salty water to displace the fresh. Remediation is long and costly.

By the middle of the twentieth century the United States Navy could no longer find fresh water anywhere on the base, so water was imported from Cuba, via a pipeline.[2] When Fidel Castro's Communist government stopped allowing the Navy to rely on Cuban water in 1964 the navy built a desalination plant.[3] The plant, installed in 1964, had first been built by the Navy at Point Loma, California in 1962, then disassembled, shipped to Guantanamo, and reassembled.

When first completed the plant's steam flash desalinators could produce up to 750,000 gallons per day.[4] After an upgrade to a reverse-osmosis system in the early 21st Century the plant can produce up to 1,500,000 gallons per day. The plant consumes close to ten million dollars of fuel per year. The water produced by the plant tastes bad, and has a strange color. No one drinks the water from the desalination plant. One of the key points Guantanamo captives protested, during the 2005 hunger strike, was that they were forced to live on the foul tasting water from the plant. Moazzam Begg recorded a conversation he had with a guard, as to why he had to drink the foul tasting water from the plant, while he saw the guard dogs were served bottled water. His guard told him, "that dog is a soldier in the United States Army".

References

{{Reflist| refs= [3] [2] [4]

[1]
  1. 1.0 1.1 [https://books.google.ca/books?id=jbtUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=guantanamo+groundwater&source=bl&ots=SCPP5q_3S2&sig=QMtCnWHktBTNiO7H9kewVOfO59g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qfcOVZLdGo3isASSo4LIDw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=guantanamo%20&f=false Geological Survey Professional Paper, Volume 911 Geological Survey Professional Paper, Geological Survey (U.S.) Author Geological Survey (U.S.)]. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1976. p. 27. https://books.google.ca/books?id=jbtUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=guantanamo+groundwater&source=bl&ots=SCPP5q_3S2&sig=QMtCnWHktBTNiO7H9kewVOfO59g&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qfcOVZLdGo3isASSo4LIDw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=guantanamo%20&f=false. "The report concluded that the ground-water sources were small recommended emphasis on surface-water reservoirs for day-to-day water-supply requirements." 
  2. 2.0 2.1 Annie Snider (2011-06-13). "Could Alternative Energy Be Gitmo's Next Legacy?". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/06/13/13greenwire-could-alternative-energy-be-gitmos-next-legacy-85177.html?pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2015-03-22. "When Castro cut off Guantanamo in 1964, the Navy spent five months importing potable water by barge while a desalination plant was built at break-neck speed." 
  3. 3.0 3.1 . UT San Diego. 2015-03-22. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/mar/21/california-drought-brown-water-restrictions/. Retrieved 2015-03-22. "The first desal plant in the state was built by the Navy at the tip of Point Loma in 1962. It was taken apart two years later and hauled to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, when Fidel Castro cut off the base water supply." 
  4. 4.0 4.1 "Protecting GITMO’s ‘Achilles' Heel’". Defense Systems Journal. 2011-06-13. http://www.dsjournal.com/greenatgtmo.html. Retrieved 2015-03-22. "To allow GTMO to remain operational, a large-scale desalination implementation would be required. The Navy quickly entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior to relocate a steam-powered desalination unit from Point Loma, California to Guantanamo Bay. Five months later the first fresh water was being delivered from the plant. Seven months after that, in February 1965, the construction of three ‘steam flash evaporator’ plants producing water at a rate of 750,000 gallons per day was completed."