page_title: Flexible barge
section_title: Applications
hierarchical_section_title: Flexible barge / Applications
caption_attribution_description: English: Spragg Bag with television camera crew on top
context_page_description: A flexible barge is a fabric barge for the transportation of bulk fresh water or other liquid bulk items such as chemicals or oil.
context_section_description: One application seen is in the Middle East where large quantities of fresh water that are available in the Turkey region could be delivered to other places around the Mediterranean Sea that have an extreme shortage of drinkable fresh water, like Israel and Gaza. Spragg believes that delivering fresh drinking water to water-poor nations can promote world peace.
  Israeli President Shimon Peres has written a letter in support of implementing a demonstration of Spragg Bag technology in the Mediterranean Sea as a tool for helping to bring Peace to the Middle East. In this letter President Peres states, "The draft of WATER, WAR AND PEACE written as a novel is in my view an original approach to highlight this grave problem and its solutions, that will pave the path to a better and more peaceful region. Your efforts to embark on a demonstration voyage to enlighten us all, both regarding the technological viability as well as cost, will surely contribute to meet the critical dilemma."
  He also points out that using waterbags towed through the Mediterranean Sea would be much more economical than transporting water through pipeline systems. This view is shared by the REFRESH consortium.
  Waterbags have been proposed to be used for emergency purposes in order to link the Gulf Cooperation Counsel countries' desalination plants all along the Persian Gulf coast.
  Another application is the regular delivery of fresh water over long distance routes.
  Proposed routes include from the state of Washington to dry regions of Southern California, from Mad River in Northern California to the San Francisco area and from Southern Chile to Atacama. Other applications are that it:
  could be used to move water through the Sacramento River Delta following an earthquake and a catastrophic levee collapse that could cut off Southern California's water supply for up to two years or more.
  could deliver large quantities of stormwater and/or recycled water to areas that need more fresh water to offset lower water levels and rising salinity.
  could be pre-positioned storage worldwide of large quantities of fresh drinking water for quick delivery after a natural disaster.
  Spragg has proposed to deliver water from the Manavgat River in Turkey across the Mediterranean Sea to Israel and the Gaza Strip, which has an extreme shortage of water, which presently is being reviewed by the World Bank.
  Spragg has proposed to the Australian government that bulk fresh drinking water using his waterbag technology could be applied to urban water supplies that have a shortage. It would establish an economically sound new industry for bulk fresh water transport. An analysis of the economic and environmental advantages for waterbag technology by using the ocean currents from the Tully River to Brisbane, Queensland has been completed.
  On the Gold Coast the Tugan desalination plant is being built to supply 120 megaliters of drinking water daily at a cost of approximately $1.2 billion. Operation of the Tugan desalination plant will produce 235,000 tons of CO₂ greenhouse gases annually. Preliminary cost estimates indicate that using waterbag technology to deliver the same amount of water from the Tully river to the Gold Coast may be 30 times less expensive than desalination, and that waterbag technology may emit 60 times less greenhouse gas. These figures suggest that waterbag technology would deliver water for much less cost than the proposed pipeline from the Burdekin River to Brisbane which is projected to cost approximately $7.5 billion for infrastructure and about $250 million for annual operation.
  Spragg has proposed to the White House the idea of a peace offering in the Middle East by supplying 20 to 30 of his waterbags with fresh water and transport them from Turkey to the Palestinians and Israelis. The technology could also be used for the collection of Australia's factory waste water outputs, storm water, and sewerage for processing and reuse.
caption: Flexible barge with camera crew on top filming an actual application.
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