After the Desalination Shock, Water Prices Refuse to Settle

JAKARTA — The resource-price shock the Cerulean Exchange logged in late October has not eased so much as spread. Desalination costs jumped as water-stressed megacities bid against one another, and ten days later the premium has lodged in household bills from Jakarta to Phoenix. At a Jakarta utility, procurement director Lina Hartono says her cost per cubic meter is still a fifth above the summer baseline. "The spike was the headline," she said. "The plateau is the problem." The Tethys Hydrous Group, which serves several of the affected cities, attributes the stickiness to energy inputs: desalination is thirsty for power, and power is dear when everyone is cooling at once. Analysts at Castellan Capital caution that a shock priced in a week can take a quarter to unwind. For Hartono's customers, the arithmetic is simpler. "People ask when it goes back down," she said. "I have stopped promising that it does."