text: There are two simple answers. First the customer base would not be willing to pay the cost of the water. Second much of the customer base are environmentally friendly thinking people who do not want any energy consuming/pollution generating  industries in there patch of the world.\n\nAlthough it is sad that the resource has not been tapped on a production scale.  We are doing pretty well here in Saudi Arabia where we can build a joint Electric Generation plant combined with a Desal plant.  They are pretty effective that way.\n\nThere are three main technologies each works to fit a particular service and they are getting quite cost effective.\n\nGood luck convincing people there are better ways.