Virtually everything we do affects our ability to harness and expend energy. One simple, small-scale
example is the energy expended by our bodies to fight the effect of gravity as salts and impurities are
removed from our body. On a much larger scale, energy is necessary to meet the needs of society, which
include obtaining, transporting, treating, and distributing potable water.
Access to clean, safe, and reliable sources of drinking water is a basic goal in today’s world. As society has
developed, so has our ability to transport water over great distances to meet that fundamental objective, as
well as the ability to measure the quality of water to ensure that it is safe to drink. To a large extent, the
advent of analytical techniques to measure contaminants, viruses, and pathogens in water paved the way
for the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) in the early 1970’s to develop rules and regulations
requiring drinking water to be treated, or “manufactured”, to meet standards for the benefit and protection of
public health. Rules and regulations have evolved since the 1970’s, commensurate with our understanding
of contaminants and ability to measure them. This “evolution” of standards led the US EPA to identify
membrane filtration – including reverse osmosis desalination – as one treatment technology for drinking
water supplies to meet increasingly difficult water quality challenges.