ODESSA, Texas — It's a different kind of liquid gold in West Texas.
This plant will not only take disposed salt water and make it clean, it'll do the same with groundwater.
"This is the first system in the world that's like this right here, taking these two pieces of equipment and putting them together to work together, first time in the world this has happened," said Tommy Erwin, Ector County Utility District president. "Period, bar none. The Cerafiltec unit's only the second one in the United States."
Two technology companies are working together to take all the bacteria, salt and unwanted particles out of undrinkable water.
And we need that water in hot West Texas.
We're no stranger to droughts. In fact, many still remember the drought ten years ago.
"As our lake levels drop down, what happens is our TDS goes up, it gets to where you can't drink it and we ran across this in 2011, 2012,' Erwin said. "Most of the cities with CMWD were put on some kind of water restrictions."
That's why the Ector County Utility District president spearheaded this effort, so we're never short supplied again and still be able to pay for it.
"With this technology that we have today, this electro-chemical nano-diffusion, along with the ceramic filtration, now we're looking at less than $3 per thousand gallons," Erwin said.
When all is said and done, water from this desalination plant would add approximately 12 million barrels of water a day to Odessa's water supply.
Next steps include getting this filtered water tested by the TCEQ. That process will take between six and twelve months.
Then, the goal is to duplicate this water filter technology and make it available to ECUD and all of Odessa.