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Physicist's Idea To Divert Water Inland Is A Sea Change

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Los Angeles Times

Published: September 14, 2008

TASTIOTA, Mexico - A few miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, amid cracked earth and mesquite and sun-bleached cactus, neat rows of emerald plants sprout from the desert floor.

The crop is salicornia. It is nourished by seawater flowing from a man-made canal. And if you believe the American who is farming it, this incongruous swath of green has the potential to feed the world, fuel our vehicles and slow global warming.

He is Carl Hodges, a Tucson, Ariz.-based atmospheric physicist who has spent most of his 71 years figuring out how humans can feed themselves in places where good soil and fresh water are in short supply.

The founding director of the University of Arizona's Environmental Research Lab, his work has attracted an eclectic band of admirers. They include heads of state, corporate chieftains and Hollywood stars, among them Martin Sheen and the late Marlon Brando.

Through the years, Hodges' knack for making things grow in odd environments has been on display at the Land Pavilion in the Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World and the Biosphere 2 project in Arizona.

Here in the northern Mexican state of Sonora, he's thinking much bigger.

The Earth's ice sheets are melting fast. Scientists predict that rising seas could swallow some low-lying areas, displacing millions of people.

Hodges sees opportunity. Why not divert the flow inland to create wealth and jobs instead of catastrophe?

Plan Would Green Desert
He wants to channel the ocean into man-made "rivers" to nourish commercial aquaculture operations, mangrove forests and crops that produce food and fuel. This greening of desert coastlines, he said, could add millions of acres of productive farmland and sequester vast quantities of carbon dioxide, the primary culprit in global warming. Hodges contends that it also could neutralize sea-level rise, in part by using exhausted freshwater aquifers as gigantic natural storage tanks for ocean water.

Analyzing recent projections of ice melt occurring in the Antarctic and Greenland, Hodges calculates that diverting the equivalent of three Mississippi Rivers inland would do the trick. He figures that would require 50 good-size seawater farms that could be built within a decade if the world gets cracking.

"The only way we can stop sea-level rise is if people believe we can," Hodges said. "This is the big idea" that humanity has been waiting for, he said.

With his trademark floppy hat, an iPhone wired perpetually to his head and a propensity to assign environmental reading homework to strangers, Hodges might be dismissed by some as an eccentric who has spent too much time in the Mexican sun.

"When I first met Carl, I thought he was a philosopher," said actor Sheen, a longtime friend.

Still, experts including Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center, say seawater agriculture could prove to be an important weapon in the fight against climate change.

Hodges has built such a farm in Africa. Political upheaval there shut much of it down in 2003. That's why he's determined to construct a showcase project in North America to demonstrate what's possible.

All he needs now is $35 million. That's where salicornia comes in.

Plant Thrives On Saltwater

A so-called halophyte or salt-loving plant, the briny succulent thrives in hellish heat and pitiful soil on a little more than a regular dousing of ocean water. Several countries are experimenting with salicornia and other saltwater-tolerant species as sources of food. Known in some restaurants as sea asparagus, salicornia can be eaten fresh or steamed, squeezed into cooking oil or ground into high-protein meal.

Hodges, who heads the nonprofit Seawater Foundation, plugged salicornia for years as the plant to help end world hunger. Do-gooders applauded. The private sector yawned.

Then oil prices exploded. Hodges saw his shot to lift his fleshy, leafless shrub from obscurity.

That's because salicornia has another nifty quality: It can be converted into biofuel. And, unlike grain-based ethanol, it doesn't need rain or prime farmland and it doesn't distort global food markets. NASA has estimated that halophytes planted over an area the size of the Sahara Desert could supply more than 90 percent of the world's energy needs.

Last year, Hodges formed a for-profit company called Global Seawater Inc. to produce salicornia biofuel in liquid and solid versions. He lugs samples of it around in a suitcase like an environmental traveling salesman.

The enterprise recently planted 1,000 acres of salicornia in rural Sonora, where Hodges has been doing preparatory research for decades. That crop will provide seed for a major venture planned 50 miles north in the coastal city of Bahia Kino. Global Seawater is attempting to lease or buy 12,000 acres there for what it envisions will be the world's largest seawater farm.

The plan is to cut an ocean canal into the desert to nourish commercial ponds of shrimp and fish. Instead of dumping the effluent back into the ocean, the company would channel it further inland to fertilize fields of salicornia for biofuel. The seawater's next stop would be man-made wetlands. These mangrove forests could be "sold" to polluters to meet emissions cuts mandated by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

"Nothing is wasted," Hodges said.

Global Seawater has a small refinery to process salicornia oil into liquid biodiesel, which Hodges said can be produced for at least one-third less than the current market price of crude oil. Leftover plant material would be converted into solid biofuel "logs" that he said burn cleaner than coal or wood.

NASA is interested in testing fuel from Hodges' halophyte. So are cement makers and other heavy industries. Retired executives from some major corporations are so encouraged by the potential that they are helping Global Seawater raise capital and focus on generating returns for investors.

Fernando Canales Clariond, former Mexican secretary of the economy and member of one of the nation's most powerful industrial families, recently joined the board.

"The world doesn't move because of idealism," he said. "It moves because of economic incentives."

Fellow board member Anthony Simon, former president of marketing for Unilever Bestfoods, put it more bluntly.

"Carl is a wonderful scientist," he said of Hodges. But he "is a lousy businessman."

Driving through the sun-scorched Sonora countryside, Hodges pointed to abandoned grain silos and crumbling concrete irrigation channels, tombstones to failed efforts at conventional farming.

"It's a dust bowl," Hodges said. "We're going to making it bloom again ... with a new kind of agriculture."

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