As to why this is, a single pipe carrying 1,000x as much water costs no where near 1,000x much per foot. Each home might only need 1/10,000,000 the water, but it’s got to be built for peak demand not average useage. On top of this, people don’t live at sea level, so you need to pump that sea water up before you can use it.
PS: Not to mention most distribution systems leak significantly, that 3$ assumes 100% efficiency at 50% it’s more like 6$.
https://sfwater.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=774...
Wholesale untreated water is 1.02$ per 1,000 gallons. Page 16: ( 0.76 per 748 Gallons delivered). Plus a fixed fee for the size of the pipe (22.67$ for a one inch pipe.)
edit: You’re looking at rate W-24. BAWSCA users seem to pay rate W-25, which is far higher. I don’t know exactly what the difference is.
They buy the water from the neighboring municipality for $3/1,000 gallons, and sell it to the users of the system for $23/1,000 for the first 1,000 gallons.
You soon realise half a gallon is plenty to drink, and you don't really need water for much else.
Nothing to do with electricity? What is this based on? Everything I've read indicates it's a very large cost. For example, this [1] paper puts electricity's share of costs at 44% vs 37 for fixed costs.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1936-704X....
I pay quite a bit more than $3/kgal, and a large fraction of that goes toward funding the SFPUC’s massive infrastructure for bringing Hetch Hetchy water to the Peninsula. A desalination plant would be located on the coast or on the bay and would not require this infrastructure.
As far as I’m concerned, the problem is the capital cost of the plant and the plumbing to safely suck in saltwater and discharge brine and has essentially nothing to do with electricity.
The situation isn’t helped by the fact that, in average and wet years, demand for desalinated water would be nil, since the Hetch Hetchy infrastructure already exists.