Earlier quoted context omitted.
Desalination is cheap in day to day terms, it’s the scale of water we use that’s the issue. Sure, we can get ~1,000 gallons of drinking water for 3$ via desalination. That works out to a monthly water bill increase of ~45$ for a family of 5. Unfortunately, crops need incredible amounts of water. So, growing corn etc with desalination would case food prices to ~quadruple.
Why do you think that the cost is an increase? I pay quite a bit more than $3/kgal, and a large fraction of that goes toward funding the SFPUC’s massive infrastructure for bringing Hetch Hetchy water to the Peninsula. A desalination plant would be located on the coast or on the bay and would not require this infrastructure. As far as I’m concerned, the problem is the capital cost of the plant and the plumbing to safe…
As to why this is, a single pipe carrying 1,000x as much water costs no where near 1,000x much per foot. Each home might only need 1/10,000,000 the water, but it’s got to be built for peak demand not average useage. On top of this, people don’t live at sea level, so you need to pump that sea water up before you can use it.
PS: Not to mention most distribution systems leak significantly, that 3$ assumes 100% efficiency at 50% it’s more like 6$.