Where does all the brine go currently? The countries most dependent on desalination currently at least seem to have plenty of desert space available to dump it, but I do wonder if it might reach volumes that are difficult to manage once desalination becomes more widespread.
Though perhaps dumping it back into the ocean is the correct thing to do, because the extracted fresh water will eventually also stream back into the ocean via the normal water cycle.
Desalination is a blessing but it also increases the dependence of the population on technical infra for daily survival. If something were to happen to the desalination plants, that's no water, immediately (in the UAE case, for example).
Well... The issue is that produced water is not much healthy to drink, not "salty" but "near salty". The "full desalination" it's much more expensive and limited in output, also involving washed clean sand to produce good mineral water...
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There is no lack of natural drinkable water and never will be. But it's an important agenda to convince people that there is. Why? I don't know, probably for power over other people.
I'm from a pace where there's an absurd amount of naturally occurring clean water and even there they are pushing this false agenda.
If people decide to live where there is no water, that's not a global problem, that's a people problem.
Some quick googling says that the average person in the U.S. uses about 100 gallons per day directly, and about 1,000 gallons per day total (including all usage). That means the U.S. could replace all water usage for less than $1 billion per day.
In particular, that means the U.S. could solve the Colorado river allocation issue for about $10 billion per year.