I've thought about solar desalination a lot lately, pumps + glass + desert = water. Then you can sell the salt by product during the cold weather to the north east.
Then there's the salt. Salt's actually kind of on the downslope in terms of its use in de-icing. You're literally salting the earth around roadways. Places that see a lot of snow and have a lot of waterways (from personal experience, like Northern Wisconsin and the UP), actually use sand instead. You expect there to be snow on the roads for a number of months regardless, so you're just offering some traction. Certain places in the Northeast are the same as far as I'm aware. Here's a resource on road salt from New Hampshire[1]. Pickle brine[2] and beet juice[3] are also beginning to get some play. Not to say the rock salt market couldn't absorb some additional supply, but I don't know where the limit is if we're talking mass desalinization.
[1] http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/was/salt-...
[2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140204-melt-...
[3] http://time.com/5761/salt-shortage-triggers-beet-juice-chees...
If nothing else, you could probably truck the salt to Coyote Dry Lake and just dump it on the existing salt flats there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project
Build a canal/channel/etc to a below sea level place, harvest the hydro power, and get a nice new (saline) lake to boot.
Anyway, I don't think that the salt is totally worthless. Don't they have salt ponds in the bay around San Jose?
The energy input is the bigger problem; you can only get so much water from a glorified solar still.
As most people every remotely familiar with politics might guess, the technical challenges are not even remotely the most difficult obstacles to be overcome for such a project.
I'm from Canada & the reason they don't use salt in places like Edmonton & Winnipeg is that it just gets too cold and salt no longer works at that temperature. In Ontario where they get the lake effects they use salt everywhere.
Well, the Atacama is 8000ft above the ocean, so the energy required to pump the water up there would be significant.
CaCl2 works down to about -32C (-25F).
But at some point, you just can't dissolve enough stuff into the water to stop it from freezing. Fortunately, that is also about the point where ice stops being quite so slippery when you drive or walk on it. So you just throw down white sand for better traction instead, put on the winter tires, and you're good until it melts in the spring.
In Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ontario, Michigan, and New York, the temperatures are such that snow and ice could go through multiple freeze-thaw cycles. If they just left it, snow would melt and re-freeze into smooth, slippery ice. Ice would melt and seep into the roads, then refreeze and pop out big chunks of pavement each time. That's why they salt and plow. It's too cold for it to safely drain away, and too warm to just leave it alone.
If there were a substance that allowed snow and ice to stay frozen at higher pressures or higher temperatures, that might be useful there, too.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/525121/molten-salts-mig...
http://www.usbr.gov/tsc/water/research/VTE.html http://www.sephtonwatertech.com/projects.html