No I just wrote a blog on water issues for a number of years. I went to water conferences and such. I haven’t done much writing recently but its a slow changing field.
In any case the big stuff that will make all the difference is happening off court in R&D in 4th generation nuclear power plants and either carbon nanotubes or graphene membranes.
What is just a total slack jaw killer here is that the pubbies don’t get how this stuff is the real bread and butter issues of the day.
The US interest in ever cheaper more plentiful water and energy —plus an understanding of its strategic importance— died in the 1970’s. Its slowly reviving but its happening almost despite the government. The pubbies of course ever behind the curve, don’t understand that the USA is on the cusp of some seriously momentous stuff that they could seize on and run with.
When I look at photos of oil rigs sitting offshore, I see potential desalination plant sites. What if we located desalination plants off shore? Use solar to distill and the steam to electrify, per your idea, or use natural gas tapped by the rig, and pipe or transport by water tenders, the fresh water to the coast.
The trucks coming to and fro collecting desalination waste products (salts, etc) are eliminated, since waste will be dumped back into the sea after separating valuable minerals, which can also be transported back via tenders. Overhead costs could be covered by mining the gold and other minerals drawn up with the seawater.
Oil rig folks are happy, NIMBY people are happy, fish are happy, seagulls not so happy (and the enviroweenies will have one heck of a time convincing people seagulls are endangered since there are zillions of them).