Alaskan lake water to be shipped to Mumbai

In a commercial scheme that attempts to rectify some of the inequalities inflicted by the beginnings of climate change, water from a lake in Alaska will be sent to a new, yet-to-be-built water hub in Mumbai and then exported to arid cities in the Middle East.

A San Antonio, Texas, based company has announced plans to export 12 billion gallons of water per year from the Blue Lake Reservoir in Sitka, Alaska, to a new, yet-to-be-built water hub on the west coast of India.

There's trillions of litres of water in a three mile-long reservoir near a town called Sitka in the archipelago off the western coast of Canada.

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It's named Blue Lake, and fewer than 9,000 people live nearby, meaning that there's very little local pressure on the water supply.

The water in the lake is pure enough to drink without any treatment, and a local bottling business has for some time siphoned small quantities out for thirsty people around North America.

But a new deal with Texas company S2C Global Systems could see far greater amounts extracted for a much larger-scale operation.

S2C's plan is to siphon off 10.9 billion litres of water -- enough to meet the needs of a city of 500,000 -- each year from the reservoir, which then be pumped into a tanker and sent to a port south of Mumbai on the west coast of India.

There, it'll be bottled and distributed around the region for profit, including to a port in Iraq.

For security reasons, the company did not disclose the port, however this first hub will include a berth for a Suezmax vessel, an offloading system to a dedicated tank farm and a distribution complex for packaged water.

Within 18 months after that we will be able to switch to a very large class vessel (302,833 cubic meters/80 Million USG), as both the ship and the berth for her will be completed within this time frame.

S2C will also sell fresh water in 20-foot containers with flexi-tanks (4623 USG) suitable for pharmaceutical/high tech manufacturing and packaged water (18.9 and 10L) for the consumer markets anywhere containers are delivered in south and west Asia from India.

Alaskan mountain water is so pure it requires no treatment except to remove organics that might be present through the natural cycle.

During its 30-day voyage from Alaska to the Arabian Sea, S2C will protect the water using an "Ozonating" system in the ships holds.

"S2C Global has an exciting future in India and the region", Rod Bartlett, managing partner of Alaska Resource Management and President of S2C Global Systems, USA said.