'global' water crisis/shortage

I recently stumbled upon this article about an Israeli water desalination plant. The cost per cubic meter (264 gallons) is estimated to be 52.7 cents. This is a low figure, as its the cheapest operation of its kind according to the article (2005). According to this more recent (2010) article about an Australian water desalination plant, their cost is $6.70 per cubic meter. The cost per gallon of these different plants equals out to $0.00199 and $0.02537 respectively. (Note: I am assuming the numbers provided by the articles are USD) According to the EPA (warning PDF) the average cost of tap water in the USA in 2009 was $2 per 1000 gallons, or $0.002 per gallon.

Now I am certainly no expert on the process, but the fact that desalination can be done at these prices (there are other examples than the ones I have provided) seems to indicate when people talk about the upcoming scarcity of water it is all a load of bull. So my question is this, why is there all this talk of a global water crisis in the future?

To clarify, I am asking about countries which have the economic strength to build a water desalination infrastructure if one were needed, not developing countries where a water crisis seems to be a real possibility. A global water crisis implies a crisis for the entire world, not simply a minority of the population.

I only clicked on the first two links (‘all’ and ‘this’) and I’m not sure what they’re talking about -

The first link seems a bit confused and is talking about both water conservation (to a developed-Western-nation audience), but also water crises in the third world, where access to drinking water is a problem:

They’re pretty clearly talking about the Third World here. How that fits in with water conservation in the U.S. is not explained, and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Water saved in the U.S. will not be used in Bolivia, for example.
The second link is talking about water issues in the U.S., which only sometimes reaches the level of crisis (like Atlanta last summer - or was it the summer before?)

I’m not sure what the second link has to do with a “global water crisis” - I can’t find the word “global” in the article.

Judging from Glennon’s website - http://rglennon.com/ - he seems to focus on water issues in the U.S. primarily.
ETA: Oh, I realize I didn’t mention desalinization… aren’t there some places where it’s not an option? (Nebraska or the Central African Republic, for example)

Aversin, you have failed to consider three very important points:

  1. The domestic urban water use figures you quoted are insignificant. Less than 5% of all water goes to domestic urban uses. Fully 75% is used by agriculture and 20% goes to industry. So it doesn’t matter if tap water is cheap because tap water is insignificant.

  2. Even if the prices are applicable to cropping regions in the midwest or central Australia, they aren’t tenable. If you own a farm that uses, say, 10 gigalitres of water a year, even if you can get desal water for $5/ kilolitre as your references suggest, that’s still 5 million dollars a year in water bills. Either you aren’t farming any more, or your prices are going to have to be put up a little. The majority of people in the world can’t afford to pay those increased prices. That is a problem for the majority of the world.

  3. Cheap doesn’t mean sustainable. A lot of the water that is being used now is groundwater that was trapped thousands, sometimes millions, of years ago. We are pumping it out daily, and it recharges over a period of millenia. It’s still cheap, but it won’t last.

Yeah, there is a potential water crisis looming. It’s not a load of bull. While there is a lot of doomsayer nonsense talked about the subject, the problem is nonetheless real. Fortunately we have a lot of solutions like subsurface drip irrigation already waiting, they just require the price stimulus to make them work.

That’s actually a pretty good answer Blake. The Olgallala aquifer is really concerning.