Tap Water Supply to Rural Indian Households Surges from 17% to 82% of all rural households in the past five years

Good news!

"“The Government of India in partnership with States/UTs is implementing the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) to provide functional tap water connections to every rural household ... Progress has been substantial: starting from 3.24 crore [30.2 million] (16.71%) connections in August 2019, the number has surged to over 15.79 crore [150.8 million] (81.57%) households as of January 29, 2026, providing water supply to the majority of rural India.”"

Tap Water Supply to Rural Indian Households Surges - Human Progress

Impact Of Jal Jeevan Mission (official press release)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Source)

Chinese desalination plant makes fresh water cheaper than tap water – plus green hydrogen

Holy grail! Desalination is salvation!

Strange both, Google and Bing search find only two news stories (and both are the same) about this important news item! One of the two articles is clearly awful spam and should not even have been retrieved as a top search result and it appears to reference the other article.

"China has launched a revolutionary facility in the eastern province of Shandong that produces fresh water from seawater for just two yuan (US$0.28) per cubic metre, generating green hydrogen as a by-product in a breakthrough that could redefine global water and energy systems."

Bing search result (based on SCMP article):

"The Shandong desalination plant in Rizhao is a groundbreaking facility that produces fresh water from seawater at a cost of just two yuan per cubic metre. This facility generates green hydrogen as a by-product and operates entirely using seawater and low-grade waste heat from nearby steel and petrochemical plants. It has achieved a "one-in, three-out" circular economy, producing 450 cubic metres of ultra-pure fresh water, 192,000 standard cubic metres of green hydrogen, and 350 tonnes of mineral-rich brine for marine chemical production. The facility's energy requirement is relatively low at roughly 4.2 kilowatt-hours per cubic metre of hydrogen produced, contributing to its economic viability and the case for replicating similar models in coastal or water-stressed regions."

Chinese desalination plant makes fresh water cheaper than tap water – plus green hydrogen | South China Morning Post "Facility in Shandong province also produces mineral-rich brine for industrial use, achieving ‘one-in, three-out’ circular economy"

'Key breakthrough' | Novel Chinese electrolyser produces hydrogen directly from seawater for 500 hours (behind paywall) "The pilot 110kW system eliminates the need for water desalination, while apparently producing H2 at similar efficiencies to conventional electrolysers"

Chinese desalination breakthrough produces cheap water and green hydrogen together (this article is also based on the above SCMP article)

Ultrasonic device dramatically speeds harvesting of water from the air

Harvesting water from air seems to have become a popular subject in recent times.

However, what happens if this harvesting was done at a large scale (e.g. providing water to thousands or even millions of humans on a daily basis) what will happen to natural humidity, weather, and the atmosphere?

"... Now, MIT engineers have come up with a way to quickly recover water from an atmospheric water harvesting material. Rather than wait for the sun to evaporate water out, the team uses ultrasonic waves to shake the water out.

The researchers have developed an ultrasonic device that vibrates at high frequency. When a water-harvesting material, known as a “sorbent,” is placed on the device, the device emits ultrasound waves that are tuned to shake water molecules out of the sorbent. The team found that the device recovers water in minutes, versus the tens of minutes or hours required by thermal designs. ..."

From the abstract:

"Atmospheric water harvesting technology, which extracts moisture from ambient air to generate water, is a promising strategy to realize decentralized water production. However, the prohibitively high energy consumption of heat-induced evaporation process of water extraction hinders the technology deployment.

Here we demonstrate that vibrational mechanical actuation can be used instead of heat to extract water from moisture harvesting materials, offering about forty-five-fold increase in the extraction energy efficiency.

We report the energy consumption for water extraction below the enthalpy of water evaporation, thus breaking the thermal limit of the energy efficiency inherent to the state-of-the-art thermal evaporation and making atmospheric water harvesting technology economically feasible for adoption on scale."

Ultrasonic device dramatically speeds harvesting of water from the air | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology "The system can be paired with any atmospheric water harvesting material to shake out drinking water in minutes instead of hours."

High-efficiency atmospheric water harvesting enabled by ultrasonic extraction (open access)

MIT engineers design an ultrasonic system to “shake” water out of an atmospheric water harvester. The new design can recover captured water in minutes rather than hours.

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals and could save billions of dollars globally

Good news! Desalination is salvation!

"Water desalination plants could replace expensive chemicals with new carbon cloth electrodes that remove boron from seawater, an important step of turning seawater into safe drinking water. ..."

From the abstract:

"Selective removal of trace contaminants from water remains a crucial challenge in water treatment. Boron is a trace contaminant that is ubiquitous in seawater and has been widely detected in groundwater.

Current boron removal methods, such as multi-stage reverse osmosis and ion-exchange adsorption, are chemical and energy intensive, necessitating the development of more sustainable technologies.

Here we address this challenge by developing surface functionalized microporous electrodes that enable boron-selective bipolar membrane-assisted electrosorption.

Our study demonstrates that micropore functionalization with oxygen-containing (hydroxyl, lactone and carboxyl) and boron-selective (dopamine, 3-methylamino-1,2-propanediol and N-methyl-d-glucamine) functional groups substantially improves electrode performance for boron removal and selectivity.

The functionalized electrodes exhibit a boron removal selectivity that is an order of magnitude higher than that of the pristine electrode, facilitating energy efficient boron electrosorption.

We identify hydroxyl groups as the key factor in enhancing boron removal performance and selectivity during electrosorption.

Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate the underlying mechanisms of boron selectivity, highlighting the role of hydrogen bonding between hydroxyl groups and boron in governing the boron-selective electrosorption process."

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals

New water purification technology helps turn seawater into drinking water without tons of chemicals (original news release) "Cutting acid and base treatments from conventional desalination plants could save billions of dollars globally, making seawater a more affordable option for drinking water"

A highly selective and energy efficient approach to boron removal overcomes the Achilles heel of seawater desalination (no public access)

This diagram shows how boron is removed by the researchers’ electrodes.

First a majority of the salt ions are removed with reverse osmosis.

Then the water flows into a cell containing a membrane with positive (pink) and negative (orange) layers. Similarly charged electrodes face the membrane layers, and when a current is applied, water molecules at the interface of the membranes split into hydrogen and hydroxide ions. The hydroxide ions stick to boron, causing it to stick to the positive electrode.

Spanish company Acciona starts work on Africa’s biggest desalination plant in Morocco

Good news! Desalination is salvation! A new love story made in Casablanca (without Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman)

"The $650m public-private partnership scheme sees the first phase producing 200 million cubic metres of drinking water a year from 2026, rising to 300 million later.

That would be enough to serve 7.5 million inhabitants of one of the world’s most water-insecure countries. ...

The plant will run entirely on wind energy. Acciona has signed a power purchase agreement with a Moroccan renewable energy producer. ..."

Acciona starts work on Africa’s biggest desalination plant - Global Construction Review A consortium led by Spanish contractor Acciona has broken ground in Morocco on what will be Africa’s largest desalination plant at Lamharza Essahel, about 40km south of Casablanca.

Credits: Human Progress Weekly Progress Roundup

Iran exhausts 1,000-year water reserve in 30 years; has highest global land subsidence

Cause for concern!

Mexico City’s Water Slows to a Trickle crisis

Let's see what the current, leftist President AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador] will do about it if anything? 

Of course, leftist media do not even mention whether AMLO is doing anything about it. Maybe the so called crisis is exaggerated or normal around this time of year?

"Mexico City is facing an escalating water crisis, as its outdated water infrastructure strains under severe drought, reports CNN.

As officials restrict water output and residents watch their faucets slow to a trickle, researchers warn the city of 22 million could hit “day zero”—the day taps run dry—within months, reports UPI. 

But that day has already arrived in many neighborhoods, while those in wealthier areas remain unaffected."

"Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of nearly 22 million people and one of the world’s biggest cities, is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography, chaotic urban development and leaky infrastructure — are compounded by the impacts of climate change.

Years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures have added stress to a water system already straining to cope with increased demand. Authorities have been forced to introduce significant restrictions on the water pumped from reservoirs.

“Several neighborhoods have suffered from a lack of water for weeks, and there are still four months left for the rains to start,”  ...

Politicians are downplaying any sense of crisis, but some experts say the situation has now reached such critical levels that Mexico City could be barreling towards “day zero” in a matter of months — where the taps run dry for huge swaths of the city.

Experts warn one of Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis of nearly 22 million people and one of the world’s biggest cities, is facing a severe water crisis as a tangle of problems — including geography, chaotic urban development and leaky infrastructure — are compounded by the impacts of climate change. ..."

Global Health NOW: CDC ‘Sunsets’ COVID Isolation Guidelines; Kids’ Zero-Emissions Future; and February’s Must-Reads

One of the world’s biggest cities may be just months away from running out of water

Asia's Age of Hydropolitics

Food for thought! Life is water and water is life!

"Most of Asia's major rivers originate in China and flow into countries like India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. China has earned the title of "upstream superpower," but concerns over the weaponization of water, the responses of nations downstream, and climate change are stirring up water politics and stoking tensions.

The visually rich three-part Nikkei Asia series titled Asia's Age of Hydropolitics explores the effects that the actions of upstream nations -- exacerbated by climate change -- have on countries downstream."

Asia's Age of Hydropolitics: News & Insights - Nikkei Asia

Don't wait, desalinate: A new approach to water purification

Good news! Desalination is salvation! Desalination is without doubt another one of the most important research areas for humanity!

"... To save energy, the researchers streamlined the salt separation process with a chemical phenomenon called a redox reaction. The word redox is a portmanteau of the words reduction (which, in chemistry, describes adding electrons to create a negative charge) and oxidation (which means subtracting electrons to create a positive charge). Physically, triggering a redox reaction looks like adding a special polymer-based material to the wastewater before it’s filtered and purified.
Chemically, the results are transformative. Instead of splitting water molecules into positively and negatively charged slices to coax out the salt, the redox reaction changes the charge of the entire water molecule in one fell swoop, achieving the same degree of salty separation with about 90% less energy than traditional water-splitting. ..."

"... electrodialysis. Just like dialysis of the blood, which, kidney-like, flushes salt and other toxins from our veins, electrodialysis removes salts and organic matter from wastewater to produce a clean, drinkable product. ..."

From the abstract:

"Robust, energy-efficient separation technologies for desalination and the removal of organic contaminants are critical in addressing growing concerns about water shortage and water pollution. Here, we propose a generalized strategy for advancing electrodialysis technologies using redox-flow concepts, by implementing a water-soluble redox-copolymer, poly(ferrocenylpropylmethacrylamide-co-[2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]trimethylammonium chloride), P(FPMAm-co-METAC), to eliminate the need for anion-exchange membranes (AEMs) and deploy cheaper and more robust nanofiltration membranes (NFs). The effective membrane retention of the redox material and stable redox activity facilitate the continuous desalination of various source waters, including brackish water, seawater, and wastewater, to produce potable water and remove organic contaminants without membrane fouling or polymer crossover. Leveraging the reversible redox reaction of ferrocene reduces energy consumption by 88% within a single-unit cell compared to conventional ED. In addition, utilizing reusable redox-copolymer and cost-effective NFs promotes economic feasibility, achieving a water production cost of $0.13 m–3. Overall, the combination of redox-copolymer in flow and NFs provides a new avenue to address water contamination caused by organic pollutants and water scarcity in an energy efficient manner."

Don't wait, desalinate: A new approach to water purification

Don’t wait, desalinate: the electrified future of clean water (primary news source) A water purification system developed by Beckman researchers separates out salt and other unnecessary particles with an electrified version of dialysis. Successfully applied to wastewater with planned expansion into rivers and seas, the method saves money and saps 90% less energy than its counterparts.

Redox-Copolymers for Nanofiltration-Enabled Electrodialysis (no public access)

Sunlight-activated "loofah hydrogel" excels at off-grid water purification without fouling

Good news! Like desalination, better water filters are salvation too!

Can you believe it, it can filter microplastics! (Caution: Irony)

"... the hydrogel is hydrophilic (water-attracting) at cool temperatures, but becomes hydrophobic (water-repelling) when heated. Pollutants such as organic dyes (which were used in lab tests) do get pulled in along with the water at cool temperatures, but because their molecules stick to the gel, they don't get expelled when the water is released at warmer temps. Droplets of oil pollution don't get drawn in in the first place, as the (then) hydrophilic gel rejects them. ... loofah hydrogel can be reused simply by rinsing it with diluted acid or ethanol. ..."

From the abstract:

"Hydrogels are promising soft materials for energy and environmental applications, including sustainable and off-grid water purification and harvesting. A current impediment to technology translation is the low water production rate well below daily human demand. To overcome this challenge, we designed a rapid-response, antifouling, loofah-inspired solar absorber gel (LSAG) capable of producing potable water from various contaminated sources at a rate of ∼26 kg m–2 h–1, which is sufficient to meet daily water demand. The LSAG─produced at room temperature via aqueous processing using an ethylene glycol (EG)–water mixture─uniquely integrates the attributes of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm), polydopamine (PDA), and poly(sulfobetaine methacrylate) (PSBMA) to enable off-grid water purification with enhanced photothermal response and the capacity to prevent oil fouling and biofouling. The use of the EG–water mixture was critical to forming the loofah-like structure with enhanced water transport. Remarkably, under sunlight irradiations of 1 and 0.5 sun, the LSAG required only 10 and 20 min to release ∼70% of its stored liquid water, respectively. Equally important, we demonstrate the ability of LSAG to purify water from various harmful sources, including those containing small molecules, oils, metals, and microplastics."

Sunlight-activated "loofah hydrogel" excels at purifying water

Quick-Release Antifouling Hydrogels for Solar-Driven Water Purification

Figure 1. Fabrication and hierarchical porous structures of the hydrogel. (a) Schematic of the fabrication method for L-PNIPAm and LSAG. (b) Schematic of the thermally driven water release process for LSAG. (c) Photograph and microstructure of natural loofah sponge and LSAG.

Could groundwater drilling solve the drought problems in the Horn of Africa? Of course!

Good news!

If I am not mistaken, then it has been known for several decades that there are e.g. gigantic groundwater reservoirs underneath the Sahara desert.

UN: State of the world's safe drinking water. Still about 2 billion people without it

My own rough estimate was about 1 billion people worldwide do have only  inconvenient or no access to potable water.

The good news is that apparently substantial progress was made over the past two decades!

"The report revealed that although more than two billion people gained access to safe drinking water over the past two decades, a quarter of the world’s population is still being left behind. "

Step up investment to deliver safe drinking water to all | | 1UN News

State of the world's drinking water: An urgent call to action to accelerate progress on ensuring safe drinking water for all

Arizona Needs to Cut 300,000 Olympic Pools’ Worth of Water in 2023

Lot's of dry swimming pools next summer? 

Just a reminder: Desalination is salvation! Why don't we make more progress on this front?

"Arizona farms are first in line to bear the brunt of the biggest restrictions put in place on the use of the Colorado River’s water after officials declared an unprecedented shortage last week.

Lake Mead reached its lowest water level since the 1930s in July, and low levels are projected to continue into 2023, prompting officials at the Bureau of Reclamation to drastically reduce Arizona’s consumption of the river’s water. Last year, the river’s already low levels resulted in Arizona getting 512,000 acre-feet less water in 2022. Even drier conditions this year led to a cut of 592,000 acre-feet in 2023, or 21% of its annually allocated Colorado River water. Nevada and Mexico are also subject to the restrictions, reducing their supply by 8% and 7%, ..."

Arizona Needs to Cut 300,000 Olympic Pools’ Worth of Water. Here Is Who Will Be Hit the Hardest. - WSJ How the Colorado River’s water is doled out depends on customers’ priority set forth in previously agreed-upon contracts

Portable desalination unit that generates clear, clean drinking water without the need for filters or high-pressure pumps

Good news! However, the throughput of this new device at about 0.3L per hour leaves something to be desired.

Sufficient and reliable potable water supply going forward is probably one of the biggest real challenges of humanity! Human ingenuity can handle it!

However, this new system needs no filters or high pressure pumps. It also clears dirty water. I wonder whether this new system can be scaled to filter thousands of liters of sea water.

"... The suitcase-sized device, which requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger, can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel, which can be purchased online for around $50. It automatically generates drinking water that exceeds World Health Organization quality standards. The technology is packaged into a user-friendly device that runs with the push of one button. ...

Instead, their unit relies on a technique called ion concentration polarization (ICP) ... Rather than filtering water, the ICP process applies an electrical field to membranes placed above and below a channel of water. The membranes repel positively or negatively charged particles — including salt molecules, bacteria, and viruses — as they flow past. The charged particles are funneled into a second stream of water that is eventually discharged.

The process removes both dissolved and suspended solids, allowing clean water to pass through the channel. Since it only requires a low-pressure pump, ICP uses less energy than other techniques.

But ICP does not always remove all the salts floating in the middle of the channel. So the researchers incorporated a second process, known as electrodialysis, to remove remaining salt ions. ..."

From the abstract:

"A portable seawater desalination system would be highly desirable to solve water challenges in rural areas and disaster situations. While many reverse osmosis-based portable desalination systems are already available commercially, they are not adequate for providing reliable drinking water in remote locations due to the requirement of high-pressure pumping and repeated maintenance. We demonstrate a field-deployable desalination system with multistage electromembrane processes, composed of two-stage ion concentration polarization and one-stage electrodialysis, to convert brackish water and seawater to drinkable water. A data-driven predictive model is used to optimize the multistage configuration, and the model predictions show good agreement with the experimental results. The portable system desalinates brackish water and seawater (2.5–45 g/L) into drinkable water (defined by WHO guideline), with the energy consumptions of 0.4–4 (brackish water) and 15.6–26.6 W h/L (seawater), respectively. In addition, the process can also reduce suspended solids by at least a factor of 10 from the source water, resulting in crystal clear water (<1 NTU) even from the source water with turbidity higher than 30 NTU (i.e., cloudy seawater by the tide). We built a fully integrated prototype (controller, pumps, and battery) packaged into a portable unit (42 × 33.5 × 19 cm3, 9.25 kg, and 0.33 L/h production rate) controlled by a smartphone, tested for battery-powered field operation. The demonstrated portable desalination system is unprecedented in size, efficiency, and operational flexibility. Therefore, it could address unique water challenges in remote, resource-limited regions of the world."

From seawater to drinking water, with the push of a button | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Researchers build a portable desalination unit that generates clear, clean drinking water without the need for filters or high-pressure pumps.

Portable Seawater Desalination System for Generating Drinkable Water in Remote Locations (open access)

The global fight over water

What a lousy documentary paid for by German taxpayers! This is leftist ideology gone wild! "You can't eat money!" you will be reminded of in this documentary! The subject of global water scarcity is very serious. I just blogged here about it!

China’s problematic solution to its water-security woes

Recommendable! Very serious stuff! Wars have been fought over water! China, a giant on clay feet/Achilles heel? What about desalination?

"Beijing has long understood that China has a water-security problem that could pose an existential threat. ... Former premier Wen Jiabao observed that water shortages threaten ‘the very survival of the Chinese nation’.

China has 20% of the world’s population but only 7% of its fresh water. And 80% of China’s water is in the south, whereas half of its population and two-thirds of its farmland are in the north. While total water usage in China increased by only 35% between 1980 and 2010, water usage in households increased elevenfold and in industrial sectors, threefold. But per capita available water in China amounts to only a quarter of the world average. ...
A three-year survey of its river system completed by Beijing in 2013 indicated that the number of rivers in China had decreased by 28,000 from previous estimates. The flow of the Yellow River, which provides water to a significant proportion of China’s population, is a tenth of what it was 80 years ago. In addition, groundwater aquifers, critically important to northern parts of China, are being depleted at a rate of 1 to 3 metres a year. A 2015 study of the country’s groundwater found that 80% was contaminated by toxic metals and other pollutants, rendering supply unfit for human consumption. ...
Given this context, Beijing’s announcement late last year that it was moving ahead with plans to construct the world’s largest hydropower dam at Motuo on the Yarlung Tsangpo river ...

The new dam, one of at least eleven to be constructed along the Yarlung Tsangpo, ... When complete, it will generate up to 60 gigawatts of electricity. Nevertheless, China’s decision to proceed with the project now is curious for two reasons.

First, analysts see such projects as unfeasible given the prohibitive costs associated with dam-building in the region and with the transmission network that would be required to get the electricity to distant population centres.

Second, existing installed hydropower already far outstrips demand in China and Southeast Asia. ...

Beijing’s decision to proceed with the dam makes more sense in light of the likelihood of its being integrated into China’s South–North Water Transfer Project. This project is designed to resolve the water shortage problem in China’s north by moving water through 1,500-kilometre-long canals.

The completed eastern and middle routes of the transfer project can transfer 20.9 billion cubic metres of water each year. In 2018, Beijing started exploring options for the controversial western route of this project. This may result in tens of millions of cubic metres of water being diverted from the Yarlung Tsangpo and other transnational river systems in Tibet to the Yellow River. ...

The consequences of the new dam for downstream countries like India and Bangladesh could prove catastrophic. The Yarlung Tsangpo is a transnational river system that becomes the Brahmaputra River in India, which provides 30% of the country’s water. The project could reduce water flows to India by 60%.

The environmental impacts in Tibet and downstream will be devastating. ... could devastate the fragile ecosystem of the Tibetan plateau, and would withhold the river’s sediments from the fertile floodplains of Assam in north-east India, and Bangladesh.’ ...
China controls the sources of 10 major rivers that flow through 11 countries and supply 1.6 billion people with water. ... "

China’s problematic solution to its water-security woes | The Strategist

Desalination Is Salvation

Posted: 2/28/2015  Updated: 11/15/2017, 4/6/2017, 1/26/2017, 12/27/2015

Update Of 11/15/2017

Just read Graphene water filter turns whisky clear. It looks like progress is accelerating. Good news!

To quote (emphasis added): “Previously graphene-oxide membranes were shown to be completely impermeable to all solvents except for water. However, a study published in Nature Materials, now shows that we can tailor the molecules that pass through these membranes by simply making them ultrathin. … In the newly developed ultrathin membranes, graphene-oxide sheets are assembled in such a way that pinholes formed during the assembly are interconnected by graphene nanochannels, which produces an atomic-scale sieve allowing the large flow of solvents through the membrane. … This new research allows for expansion in the applications of graphene based membranes from seawater desalination to organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN).”

Update Of 4/6/2017

Just read Graphene sieve turns seawater into drinking water. If confirmed, this could be huge! Scarcity of drinking water is history!

“The Manchester-based group have now further developed these graphene[-oxide] membranes and found a strategy to avoid the swelling of the membrane when exposed to water. The pore size in the membrane can be precisely controlled which can sieve common salts out of salty water and make it safe to drink. … When the common salts are dissolved in water, they always form a 'shell' of water molecules around the salt molecules. This allows the tiny capillaries of the graphene-oxide membranes to block the salt from flowing along with the water. Water molecules are able to pass through the membrane barrier and flow anomalously fast which is ideal for application of these membranes for desalination.” (emphasis added)

Update Of 1/26/2017

Just read Graphene Solar Absorber Could Enable Cheap Thermal Desalination: “Now researchers … have developed a solar absorber material made from graphene oxide that enables a solar approach to desalinating water without the need for solar concentrators and thermal insulation.”

Update Of 12/27/2015

Just read:

1. Shocking Trick To Desalinate Seawater: “Engineers at MIT have come up with a new desalination system that uses a shockwave to get the salt out of seawater. It could be a practical and energy-efficient method for desalination; water purification in remote locations and emergencies; and for cleaning brackish wastewater generated from hydraulic fracturing, the researchers say.”
2. Molybdenum Disulfide Outperforms Graphene in Water Desalination: “MoS2 has inherent advantages in that the molybdenum in the center attracts water, then the sulfur on the other side pushes it away, so we have much higher rate of water going through the pore”

Trigger

Pardon my play on words in the title of this blog post. No blasphemy intended! On the contrary!

Just read Megascale Desalination The world’s largest and cheapest reverse-osmosis desalination plant is up and running in Israel. Desalination plants account already for 40% of Israel’s water supply. This is truly amazing.

Immediate, cheap, and reliable access to clean and sufficient water is perhaps one of the biggest, present challenges to humans all over the world.

It has recently been reported, that California is also looking into building new and reactivating shut down existing desalination plants.

Desalination out of Desperation Severe droughts are forcing researchers to rethink how technology can increase the supply of fresh water.

The Oceans - A Near Endless Source Of Water

We can only hope that human ingenuity will overcome this problem very soon. More money should be spent on this research.