Desalination Plant in NY

The New York Times:

There was a time not long ago when the Hudson River was little more than a convenient dump site, a river so heavily used and contaminated that a state commission once referred to it as New York’s open sewer. But Rockland County residents may soon be drinking its water.

A regional water supply company that serves Rockland County submitted a plan this month to build a desalination plant that would tap the Hudson to address Rockland’s long-term water needs. The company, United Water New York, would build the plant by 2015 and supply Rockland residents with 7.5 million gallons of drinking water a day...

United Water, which supplies water to more than two dozen municipalities across the country, estimates that construction of the desalination plant would cost nearly $80 million, which the company will pay for in part by raising rates. It would be built in the vicinity of Stony Point, just across the Hudson from the Indian Point nuclear plant, and include a complex treatment system that must remove not only toxic chemicals like PCBs, tritium and strontium 90, but also an array of dissolved solids like sodium, sulfate and magnesium.