This comes up a lot when desalination is mentioned. Think of the pacific as a bucket of water. And desalinating all the water we ever need adds up to tiny fraction of a drop of water in comparison. Now the brine is an even tinier fraction of that drop that goes back in the bucket. What does it do to ppm counts of things like salt? Absolutely nothing whatsoever.
Yes, dumping concentrated brine in shallow waters causes issues for the local wild life. Simple solution: don't dump it there. For example, if you pump it out to deeper waters, you are not going to affect ppm counts of salt and other minerals in any meaningful or even measurable way. You couldn't even if you wanted to. It's just way too much water.
There's a reason why surfers in LA wear wet suits: the water there is cold because it has no chance to heat up by much. That's because the coast there isn't very shallow. About 1-2 miles from the coast, the bottom already drops to hundreds of feet. And there are some powerful currents that constantly mix things up. Ideal place to get rid of a relatively tiny amount of brine.
Brine disposal is a simple engineering problem. Probably you and I could come up with a dozen different ways to do it that would be perfectly acceptable. Of course there's a cost attached to those things. That's actually the main challenge. Pipes and pumps cost money.
Yes, dumping concentrated brine in shallow waters causes issues for the local wild life. Simple solution: don't dump it there. For example, if you pump it out to deeper waters, you are not going to affect ppm counts of salt and other minerals in any meaningful or even measurable way. You couldn't even if you wanted to. It's just way too much water.
There's a reason why surfers in LA wear wet suits: the water there is cold because it has no chance to heat up by much. That's because the coast there isn't very shallow. About 1-2 miles from the coast, the bottom already drops to hundreds of feet. And there are some powerful currents that constantly mix things up. Ideal place to get rid of a relatively tiny amount of brine.
Brine disposal is a simple engineering problem. Probably you and I could come up with a dozen different ways to do it that would be perfectly acceptable. Of course there's a cost attached to those things. That's actually the main challenge. Pipes and pumps cost money.