«We no longer have a choice, we are going to be the pioneers in Corsica to install a desalination unit to produce 500 cubic meters of drinking water per day which should start operating around September 10», explained to AFP Patrice Quilici, mayor of this village located at the tip of Cap Corse which includes the marina of Macinaggio, very popular with tourists.
Rogliano’s drinking water is stored in a reservoir with a capacity of 48,000 m3 and whose level was 16,500 m3 on August 1st, knowing that the village sees its population multiplied almost 10 in summer with the arrival of many tourists. As a result, drinking water consumption increased to around 1,000 m3 per day, detailed the mayor.
The village «goes from 650 inhabitants in winter to 6,000 in season» and has already experienced restrictions on the use of water since April 1, according to the city councilor.
Desalination plants are increasingly present in the world, which today has 1.5 to 2 billion people living in regions where water is lacking for at least part of the year, according to the UN. .
But a study by UN University researchers in Canada, the Netherlands and South Korea, published in 2019, showed that the 16,000 desalination plants installed worldwide, which produce nearly 100 million cubic meters of desalinated water per day create more toxic waste than water.
On average, for every liter of fresh water generated, 1.5 liters of saline sludge is released, usually into the ocean, disrupting ecosystems.