Desert Dilemma: How to Shut Off That Designer Water, Get Back to Canteens

Even in the age of Perrier, the image is jarring: front-line American soldiers, clad head to toe for combat, quaffing liters of commercial bottled water that cost more in this country than gasoline.

If the U.S. Army has its way, they will soon be back to the good old canteen. But even after Army units solve the awesome problems involved in desalinating some of the saltiest water in the world, some coddling is to continue. Commanders believe that to wean troops from the designer stuff, they will have to chill the rubbery-tasting alternative that emerges from Army storage tanks.

The plastic bottles of Nissah and Yaiba currently in use are provided by contractors. But of the total of 1.5 million gallons of water consumed in this arid climate daily as part of the American presence, the U.S. military provides less than 10%.

The rest comes from the Saudi government, which has arranged the round-the-clock shipments that ferry case after case of Saudi Arabia’s purest all the way to the front.

But U.S. supply experts are far from happy with the arrangement and are particularly concerned at the mounting difficulties and potential danger of trucking water to front-line troops who have moved to increasingly isolated areas.

“We’re trying to become more self-sufficient in water all the time,” said Army Capt. Bob Stanley, an 18th Airborne Corps officer detailed to provide 18.6 gallons of water per man per day to three full Army divisions.

By Thanksgiving, Stanley said Monday, the Army hopes to meet 90% of the U.S. needs by separating the salt from sea- and well-water, and then using pipelines to deliver water as far as 80 miles from the source.

By then, military officials said, the majority of troops might again rely on the green-plastic canteens strapped to their belts rather than on the liter bottle stuffed in their fatigue pockets.

On a scorching day, however, the quartermaster officer stood on a beach along the Persian Gulf as a water purification detachment based at Ft. Irwin, Calif., told of the difficulties of turning some of the world’s saltiest sea water into something a soldier might like to drink.

“This is kind of depressing to us because the process is so slow,” said Sgt. Eddie Maldonado, a Pico Rivera native. His 82nd Quartermaster Detachment, by drawing water from the Persian Gulf and piping it through an Army reverse osmosis system, has been able to meet no more than 20% of the predicted capacity of 150,000 gallons a day.

So salty is the water that the self-dubbed “water dogs,” the first military desalination unit in Saudi Arabia, must send it through the system twice.

The unit, set up on this beach largely for training, is scheduled to move closer to the front in the next few days. Military experts said that there is no guarantee that the job will be any easier.

The Army, responsible for supplying water to all four branches of the U.S. services, hopes to win Saudi government permission to drill new wells in the desert, where underground aquifers contain water that is brackish but far easier to purify.

So far, however, no such permission has been forthcoming, and the Army has had to rely on existing wells and the attempts to tap water directly from the sea.

“This is the highest (saline content) we’ve ever used the system with,” said Stanley, known in 18th Corps command headquarters as commander-in-chief for water.

At retail prices, the bottled water costs about 18 cents a liter, about half again as much as gasoline in oil-rich Saudi Arabia. The cost is borne by the Saudi government, but military officials made it clear that they are troubled by the expense.

The beachside unit visited by reporters Monday contains the only two large-scale desalination systems the Army has established here. There are about five others in the country, together with about 20 smaller units capable of producing about one-tenth the volume. Other units are on the way, officials said.

The reverse-osmosis purification unit, known as a ROPU, must reduce the volume of dissolved solids from an extraordinary 6.5% in the Persian Gulf to less than 0.15% to meet Army standards. The process, conducted under high pressure, creates a chemical charge that helps to separate the pure water from the brine.

Even if the Army meets its late November production target, it will have to cope with the inevitable complaints from those who have become used to Nissah and Yaiba, which, while often warm, are also tasty.

The Army system provides for its water to be held in massive, 50,000-gallon storage tanks. This tends to impart a faint taste of rubber to the water.

To combat the opposition, Stanley said his superiors had decided to postpone any switch from the bottles until the Army could ship refrigeration units capable of cooling the water in 400-gallon “water buffalo” storage tanks.

“We need to get the water chilled before we wean the soldiers off the bottled water,” he said. But he insisted that the Army version is “not a real big morale killer.”

But even at the beachside unit, where swarming flies and a ban on swimming tempered the oceanfront allure, soldiers made their designer-water preferences clear.

“I’ve got nothing against this stuff,” a sergeant said, kicking the rubber storage tank as it baked in the heat, “but I’m waiting till those bottles run out.”