For generations, the water infrastructure beneath this southern Alabama city was corroding, cracking and failing — out of sight and seemingly out of mind — as the population shrank and poverty rose. Until it became impossible to ignore.
Last year residents learned a startling truth: Prichard loses over half, sometimes more than 60%, of the drinking water it buys from nearby Mobile, according to a state environmental report that said “the state of disrepair of Prichard’s water lines cannot be overstated.” Residents and experts say it also imposes a crippling financial burden on one of the state’s poorest cities, where more than 30% live in poverty.
“It’s a heartbreaking situation,” said community activist Carletta Davis, recounting how residents have been shocked by monthly water bills totaling hundreds or thousands of dollars. “I see people struggling with whether or not they have to pay their water bills or whether or not they can buy food or whether or not they can get their medicine.”
A much bigger drawback is that it creates a huge amount of toxic brine. You can’t put it back in the ocean and increase ocean salinity because that would be an environmental disaster. You have to store it on land. Then you have the same issue as nuclear waste except far, far larger because it’s a lot more waste to find a place to store without it getting into the fresh water table or the ocean.
You CAN put it back into the ocean, you just can’t do it at a single spot but have to spread it out so the local salinity doesn’t go too high. That’s simply a matter of building more output pipes, the only obstacle is cost.
Could we not use the left over salt for the food industry? I genuinely am curious I don’t know much about this stuff
You could use some of it, but a desalination plant would produce way more salt than we’d need, by orders of magnitude