Seen in the Orlando Sentinel:
Several fast-growing northeast Florida communities could tap into the Atlantic Ocean for drinking water by anchoring a desalination ship 2½ miles off the coast.
If completed, the floating water factory could become the first major ocean-desalination system in the United States. The idea is to retrofit an oil tanker with filters and powerful pumps that would make up to 25 million gallons of drinking water a day, enough for more than 150,000 people.[...]
Without the ocean option, the communities may have to draw from the more fragile St. Johns River, now the focus of a budding water-rights battle between Orlando, Jacksonville and cities in between.
Desalination is already relatively common in the Middle East and Australia, but it hasn’t caught on to any great extent in the U.S. due to the expense. Population growing beyond the availability of groundwater to support it, aggravated by drought, is apparently shifting the balance.
The apparent reason for building the plant offshore is to reduce expense (no need to build both the intake and exhaust pipelines, if the plant is already where it would want to exhaust to), as well as perhaps to address cat risk (when a hurricane approaches, the plant can disconnect and steam out of harm’s way).
Of course, I can’t help but think that if the expense is a big concern, they could always bottle the desalinated water, slap a fancy label on the stuff, and sell it as a premium bottled beverage. Considering how much Americans are willing to pay for bottled water….