Desalinating Water Is Becoming "Absurdly Cheap" (opens in new tab)

When I think of "directly", it's not just drinking, but all water usage under your direct control. That includes cooking, cleaning, bathing, flushing, watering your plants, etc. Basically everything that flows through your home. It would not include things like the water used to grow the food you buy, to water the grass in your local golf course, etc.

I'm on the board of a small California water company with ~750 customers. Our average household usage is ~100 gallons per day, a little more in the summer and a little less in the winter. Most households here are 1-2 people, mostly people over 60, and very few children. This is a forested area in the mountains (4,500 foot elevation) with no agriculture. I'm only aware of one lawn and no swimming pools. We get a lot or precipitation, so most plants and trees around here do not get watered. All that to say that we're likely lighter usage than a lot of areas, especially in California. So 100 gallons per person per day being used directly is probably a reasonable order of magnitude guess.

I'd interpret "directly" as water that was consumed, touched, or seen. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me between bathing, toilet use, washing, food prep, and drinking.

Domestic seems to be about 100 gallons per day, per capita 1,000.

Obviously that's not a problem in general: the salt comes from the ocean, and the salt as well as the fresh water extracted go back to the ocean just by different paths.

But the salt (in the form of brine, as I understand it) is generally localized, and thus can be an environmental issue that needs to be addressed.

That may be, but the fact remains that the Colorado is over-allocated by some ridiculous amount, and the states and Mexico are arguing over it. Some non-zero amount is spent making e.g. Las Vegas and Phoenix more water-efficient to help alleviate the issue.

We could decrease our dependence our electricity and gasoline too. Who knows, it might even be beneficial for the environment.

Government tank trucks will shortly begin distributing water. It might not be enough for a good wash, but nobody will be dying of thirst.

Except something like an EMP or other large scale breakdown of infrastructure.

Plan it to be combined with waste water treatment or other cooling water from power plants to dilute it, or disperse it over a larger area. It goes into the ocean currently.

It would cause areas of higher salt concentrations where it is dumped. They only way to not cause this (for large volumes of brine) would be to dilute it first and of course that defeats the purpose of salination.

Pump it through pipe a few miles off coast?

good. we got the minerals.

but now where do we put all of the salt?

This is still about 1/3 the price of city water is lots of the EU. People make less than half that of Americans and people manage. People will just use less damned water, which is a good thing.

It _should_ be stupidly expensive to keep your yard green in Tx in the summer. Americans are living with artificially low prices for so many things.

Absurdly cheap to a billionaire who's never given AF about ordinary, let alone poor, people.

Water is in no way disappearing in the place where I'm from, yet there are media and political campaigns about coming water shortages there. Even though it's geologically impossible. It's comparable to creating a big scare about tropical diseases in some place like Iceland. And everybody has to pretend that all science and evidence in front of your eyes is moot.

Has the human mind deteriorated now to the extent that people cannot understand that some issues are local? I am reminded of the Soviet days, when they changed farming techniques with disastrous results, because they had "new knowledge". The scientific knowledge in question was "I god damned said so" from the rulers. Anybody who disagrees is a traitor, sent into exile, or down voted by hackers.