Here’s the article that I mentioned above from Wired magazine. Man, Wired does some nice journalism and isn’t bracketed by what a lot of people think (“oh, it’s a computer magazine” [I subscribe to the paper version]). Turns out, our treaty with Mexico is to ensure that enough water reaches them, but the plant can’t go online because the current waste runoff has created a wetland that shouldn’t exist, but does, and is now protected. If the plant were to go online, this artificial wetland would wither, and then what?
Oh, so one of the principal points is, it isn’t cost that’s prohibitive, but decidedly political factors.