Tell Congress to accelerate U.S. desalination progress!

San Diego, California, once a water-stressed city, has become an indirect water exporter due to the excellent performance of its new Carlsbad desalination plant, online since 2015 and the largest in North America. As the Colorado River grows drier, the states of Arizona and Nevada (and reportedly soon Utah as well) are now in talks to fund more California desalination and water recycling projects in exchange for some Californian river water rights. The American West drought is getting some innovative solutions!

Desalination is on track to expand. In 2026, two companies and two county governments in Texas have signed off on a new partnership to build a gigantic new advanced-reverse-osmosis desalination plant on South Padre Island with a capacity of at least 50 million gallons per day. This could potentially “drought-proof” the entire Rio Grande Valley region (currently severely water-stressed to the point of risking draining the river!) by providing a consistent supply of drinkable water from the Gulf of Mexico!

And the technology keeps getting better. Saudi Arabia recently achieved a new world record for ultra-energy-efficient desalination, with a new cutting-edge advanced reverse osmosis unit at the Yanbu desalination complex (partially solar powered!) boasting a capacity of 200,000 cubic meters of water per day, and record-low energy use of 1.55 kwH per cubic meter desalinated.  

Around the world, costs of desalination projects have declined, membrane technologies have improved, clean energy has provided a reliable cheap power source, and new fish-safe seawater intake and brine output designs have greatly reduced impacts on marine life. Innovation is continuing rapidly! There are now over 20,000 desalination plants worldwide, expanding at about 7% annually since 2010.

But as with housing, high-speed rail, and clean energy projects, desalination build-out in the U.S. is severely held back by a jurisdictionally fragmented and lawsuit-vulnerable permitting process that delays projects by years or cancels them entirely.

Congress is currently considering the FREEDOM Act to remove barriers to clean energy progress (and stop White House sabotage attacks). But there’s no comparable push (yet!) to streamline the permitting process for desalination plants. Establishing a unified fast-track federal permitting system for modern clean energy-powered and fish-friendly desalination projects in America would directly boost civilizational climate resilience, ensure abundant drinking water for families, and directly reduce pressure on many overtaxed and drought-stricken river ecosystems.

Tell Congress to accelerate U.S. desalination progress!