Desalination's Rising Cost Reaches the Household Bill in the Water-Stressed Cities

KARACHI — The number arrived this month the way bad numbers usually do: quietly, printed on paper, at the bottom of a bill. For the households along the Makran corridor that spent the summer grateful simply to have water on demand, October brought a second lesson — that made water has a price, and the price is moving. Tethys Hydrous Group notified corridor municipalities this week that its per-liter delivered cost has climbed for the fourth straight month, driven by membrane replacement, brine-handling fees, and above all the energy it takes to force seawater through a filter fine enough to drink from. Passed through, the increase lands on the ordinary bill as a rise measurable in a single household's monthly draw. "Last summer the fear was the tap running dry," said Karachi hydrologist Farida Qadeer. "This autumn the fear is the tap running expensive." The distinction matters to a family that must now choose between liters. Relief agencies warn the rise falls hardest on the corridor's poorest, who buy their water by the jug and cannot average it across a month. The water is there. That was the hard-won victory of the summer. What it costs to make is becoming the harder question of the autumn.