By Mary Manning (contact)

Sun, Oct 5, 2008 (2 a.m.)

As drought keeps lowering Lake Mead, UNLV geoscientist David Kreamer wondered how Las Vegas could find other sources of drinking water. And his ideas led him out to sea.

During a scientific meeting in Houston, Texas, Kreamer plans to reveal today how to wring the salt out of sea water by an unlikely means — mobilizing warships now in mothballs.

Kreamer said that his idea is not a new one. U.S. Navy aircraft carriers, for example, have had to desalinate ocean water to create fresh water for keeping large crews hydrated while at sea for six months or more.

Instead of leaving such ships in dry dock or cluttering working harbors with mothballed vessels, they are ideal desalinization platforms, Kreamer said,

The U.S. Defense Department alone has a fairly large mothballed fleet, including inactive Navy vessels and the U.S. Merchant Marine reserve fleet.

Kreamer's study examines recycling decommissioned Navy ships, especially old aircraft carriers, to become floating desalinization plants.

If Los Angeles would use one of these ships, Southern Nevada could take a greater share of the Colorado River from Lake Mead, Kreamer said. The Colorado serves more than 23 million people in California, Nevada and Arizona.

But Kreamer is thinking beyond local water shortages toward a practical solution for a global problem.

The United Nations estimates that 1.1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water today. The crisis is expected to grow as climate change continues, Kreamer noted.

With mobilized ships, 37 percent of the world's population living along coastlines could have access to fresh water through desalinization, he said.

And the expenses to get those vessels ship-shape are reasonable. While it cost the government $3.1 billion to mothball the Ronald Reagan, converting such a ship to desalt water might run $250 million to $1 billion instead.

Decommissioning the John F. Kennedy multipurpose aircraft carrier in August 2007 saved the Navy about $1.2 billion, yet the ship is still seaworthy and is a good candidate as a working desalinization plant, Kreamer said.

Not only could such use of mothballed aircraft carriers serve coastal cities, but they could sail into action during emergencies or terrorist attacks, Kreamer said.

Mobile military ships wringing salt from sea water "could outrun a hurricane and steam within days to an area of natural or man-made disasters," Kreamer said.

The ships could be outfitted to produce power by wind, waves or solar generators and meet cost and environmental concerns at sea, Kreamer said.

Kreamer is speaking at a joint meeting of the Geological Society of America, Soil Science Society of America, American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies.