Management Plan Needed for the Nation's Saline Water Conversion Program

In 1952, the Congress established the Saline Water Conversion Program to research and develop practical, low-cost means of converting seawater and other saline waters into useful water. Although the program has been cited as being responsible for much of the desalting technology currently in use or being installed in the world today, the objective of the Saline Water Conversion Program has not been met to a large extent. The program has suffered from a lack of consistent management focus, and various administration changes have contributed to uncertainty on what needs to be done, in what priority, and when it should be completed. Recently, the threat of program termination has raised questions concerning the program's future and resulted in an unstable environment. The Office of Water Research and Technology needs to better define its management plan for achieving program objectives by identifying goals and milestones for measuring, monitoring, and guiding the research, development, and demonstration efforts for each desalination process. A further step in improving planning would be the development of specific criteria indicating when a process would be considered commercially available and would not need additional government support.