Read full text: https://rubino.substack.com/p/can-desalination-save-the-southwest?publication_id=1166121&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=y7h5a&utm_medium=email
Not Yet
Water produced via desalination is at least twice as expensive as current sources, which would render much of the Southwest’s economic activity prohibitively expensive. We’re talking billions of dollars a year for a city the size of San Diego, just for water.
Meanwhile, the by-products of desalination include a lot of nasty things besides salt, and there’s no generally accepted way of disposing of it. Dumping it back into the ocean is the obvious solution, but all that salt and toxic chemicals are deadly for sea life. So desalination, for now, will not save Arizona and Nevada.
The Easy (But Currently Inconceivable) Answer
As with so much of the US economy, the answer to this problem is to simply stop doing stupid things. We borrow huge amounts of money and can’t imagine not living that way. We drive tons of metal for long distances to run errands. We eat horrendously poisonous foods because they’re convenient, and then demand that someone else cover the cost of our healthcare. Southwestern water use is just one more example of the dysfunction that has to end, even though we can’t yet conceive of it.
