There are a few very big salt mines below the great lakes. We could totally get a desalinization plant in Michigan by pulling water from the lakes, salt from the Detroit salt mine, and combining them in the input stream to the plant!

someone has been playing in the perpetual motion machine sandbox again i see

I think it sounds quite sensible. How is it different from using all fresh water as an all you can dump free-for-all public sewage system before wondering where the drink is coming from? In India they poop in the water then take a bath in it and cook their food in it. In the west we do our pooping upstream because it looks so much cleaner that way. NO! I fail to see how adding salt before desalination is any less sensible. Lets just do it.

you're desalinating water to have an abundant source of fresh water. why in the world does taking fresh water and adding salt being mined from the ground together to make salt water to then desalinate make any sort of sense?

We already have abundant fresh water. We use it to transport sewage, fertilizers and other crap to the ocean. It would be silly to try to clean it afterwards - but here we are?

Adding salt is a great idea, it pushes our collective stupidity to a noteworthy level of nonsensicalness.

It makes me wonder what other hard to remove poisons we could add to challenge ourselves. Perhaps design a new disease?

>We already have abundant fresh water.

Clearly, you're not having a rational conversation with comments like this. If there was an abundance of fresh water, the western half of the US would not have been in severe drought conditions for the past however many years. This is where I leave you as you are just making things up like and not even having a good faith conversation

I'm just watering the lawn.