<story><title>Why don&apos;t we get our drinking water by taking salt out seawater? (2008)</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-our-drinking-water-from-the-ocean/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bagels</author><text>Article puts the cost to produce a cubic meter of water at $1-$2&lt;p&gt;In the bay area, I&amp;#x27;m paying ~$2.80 per cubic meter.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see why it&amp;#x27;s not feasible.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are transmission&amp;#x2F;pumping costs. Assuming the water we&amp;#x27;re getting now is free, that&amp;#x27;s still only ~50-75% increase in cost over current costs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ChuckMcM</author><text>As a person who has run through this particular loop once with local politics (Sunnyvale&amp;#x27;s northern border is the SF Bay which has former Morton Salt ponds in it) what I ran into was two things, one that there wasn&amp;#x27;t a cost effective power solution for just desalination, and two, the players don&amp;#x27;t care about water to individuals (drinking water and what not) because there is absolutely no risk whatsoever in the bay area of not having &amp;quot;enough&amp;quot; of it. The political block that kills it is a combination of local pop saying &amp;quot;we don&amp;#x27;t want nuclear&amp;#x2F;cheap power in our back yard&amp;quot; and the folks farming the desert in the central valley saying &amp;quot;If you can&amp;#x27;t supply farms, why would you do it?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;My hope is that one day, small scale nuclear power (sometimes called &amp;quot;modular nuclear power&amp;quot;) will make this a reality.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why don&apos;t we get our drinking water by taking salt out seawater? (2008)</title><url>https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-our-drinking-water-from-the-ocean/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bagels</author><text>Article puts the cost to produce a cubic meter of water at $1-$2&lt;p&gt;In the bay area, I&amp;#x27;m paying ~$2.80 per cubic meter.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see why it&amp;#x27;s not feasible.&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are transmission&amp;#x2F;pumping costs. Assuming the water we&amp;#x27;re getting now is free, that&amp;#x27;s still only ~50-75% increase in cost over current costs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>labster</author><text>Article is 15 years old, energy and labor prices have increased a lot. We need a new cost estimate.</text></comment>