Augustus Doricko, founder of cloud seeding startup Rainmaker, explains why coastal desalination plants cannot easily supply water to inland states like Nevada, Colorado, or California's Central Valley.
“The problem with desalination for gigascale American projects for a lot of the world that is currently undersupplied with respect to water is conveyance. We can set up a huge desal project in LA. Sweet. No dice for Colorado. Doesn't matter for Nevada. Barely even matters for the Central Valley because you have to have hundreds of miles of huge pipes and then maintain those pipes for as long as the project exists.”
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More from Augustus Doricko
AssertionSupported
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AssertionContradicted
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AssertionPartly supported
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AssertionSupported
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