$75M is a significant amount of money. Small companies doing real, significant work often have revenues in the single digit millions, $75M could fund that kind of place for a decade. When you've worked in that kind of environment, seeing garbage like Juicero get hundreds of millions, or morons throwing away dozens of billions like it's nothing, really rankles. :)

It’s renewed funding. First paragraph:

> Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced renewed funding for the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI), DOE’s energy innovation hub for desalination. With $75 million over five years for this second phase of the Hub, NAWI will continue to bring together a team of industry and academic partners to examine the critical technical barriers and research needed to radically lower the cost and energy of water purification technologies.

It depends where it's being spent in the development phase. It can be a lot of money for early research, but doesn't go far if you're at the shovels in the ground phase.

Tech analogy: $75M is a massive angel round, small Series D.

Some would say it’s just a drop in the bucket.