Shipping freshwater from Norway to Europe has been discussed several times, but so far hasn’t materialized, except in plastic bottles and as high price ice cubes cut from glaciers.
One scheme that has been discussed is to ship water that is emitted from the Hydro power station in Tafjord:
Lot of ways to make money carrying water in vessels. When the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel was built, 17 miles long, steam powered pile driver was sunk in a storm. It had a condenser & made its own fresh water . Replacement could not make its own & needed a large volume of fresh water. Nice money was made with a small bunker tanker transporting fresh water.
Recently rain run off water from the local land fill was considered hazardous waste. Lucrative contact receiving truck loads at a local tank farm, loading barges & towing to a treatment plant on the Delaware River.
Ships, barges, boats, can move most anything, if it pays somebody is going to provide a solution.
Bermuda sometimes imports fresh water. I was in the Bahamas when a barge with a rust hole filled the resort’s tanks with “fresh water” that was actually just water from the harbour, that was a nasty surprise when I drank a glass!
In 1977 or so in the midst of drought conditions the City of Santa Barbara approached my friend Capitan R.H. Brandenburger.
He ran lightering operations off the California coast.
They wondered about towing icebergs from Canada. He put that idea in the tank.
Sunkist Growers had been shipping orange juice concentrate in tankers from south America so he suggested that method from glacial waters in Canada.
It would have been expensive and then the drought broke.
Very long time ago saw a T2 discharging to trucks in Brooklyn. Asked what she was carrying. California wine shipped in bulk through the canal bottled in New York.
There are built Juice Carriers in operation and have been for many years, but orange juice is a more valuable commodity than fresh water (at least until there is a serious drought)
I did carry a cargo of technical fresh water on a chemical tanker a few years ago.
It is carried under Marpol Annex II, Cat. OS, and came with it’s own MSDS, including the typical standard phrases:
“Ingestion may cause asphyxiation”, and
“after skin contact, remove clothes and wash off with plenty of… water”
Back in the day we used to steam up the North River to around Chelsea, there we loaded the bunkering tanker with river water. We then discharged it at Tosco refinery, now called Bayway.
Apparently fresh water is part of the refining process and with the area in a drought they got creative.
Later in Exxon got busted sailing its tankers up to Hyde Park, then out to sea, they were loading fresh water and selling it in the Carribean Islands. I’m pretty sure it was river keeper that shut them down.
You can still buy fresh water in NY Harbor. Millers Launch and possibly Kirby still have water barges.
