Seawater Desalination
Seawater desalination is the process that takes away mineral components from saline (salt) water. This process allows for communities who would otherwise import freshwater, the opportunity to obtain fresh drinking water from coastal regions.
Some parts of the world, such as Australia, require Saltwater Desalination for providing their large populations with fresh drinking water. The Sydney Desalination Plant was constructed in 2010 to supplement Sydney with freshwater. Due to recent droughts, the plant has been able to supply up to 66 million gallons of freshwater per day to Sydney.
As a finite resource, freshwater is a basic need for not only drinking but also in industrial settings. Freshwater will always be a necessity and over time the resources available today will be harder to acquire. The cost of desalination is relatively higher than other sources of freshwater as of now. In some cases, there is no option but to pay the steep price for the resource. Over the coming decades as the technology develops and sources of freshwater will continuously become scarcer meaning that desalination will become more prevalent in certain parts of the globe.