Comment on Desalination system could produce freshwater that is cheaper than tap water
Khotetsu@lib.lgbt 1 year agoYou’re correct, but so are they. In the long term and at a large scale, it balances out, but in the short term, there is a very real concern about local salinity levels wherever you’re reintroducing that salt to the ocean. Keeping up with the desalination plants will be a tricky business of logistics to avoid destroying the ecosystem around where you’re dumping that salt.
Adding the salt into water leaving sewage systems before it returns to the ocean might be a good idea, as you could basically kill two birds with one stone: put the salt back in the ocean while also avoiding damaging the local ecosystem with the fresh water of the sewage system reducing local salinity levels. But I’m no engineer or water treatment specialist, so I dunno if that’s at all a real solution.
havokdj@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You hit the nail in the head on that first part. Peoe don’t realize exactly how long the water cycle takes to recover to natural levels when human intervention is accounted for. This is something that we are talking centuries to make happen, and that’s assuming we go at a steady rate rather than desalinate like we are trying to suck the oceans dry.