Desalination Plants - There are several ways to remove the salt from sea water and make it drinkable. However it is done, desalination is much more expensive than simply pumping water out the ground or out of a stream. Key West in Florida is the only American city that runs exclusively on desalinated water, and the cost is about ten times as great as for more traditional sources. However, abundant fresh water can be well worth the cost if there is no other way to get it. Icebergs - A process that has been proposed many times, but never used to a significant extent, is to obtain fresh water by capturing and melting icebergs.
Most icebergs are large pieces of glacial ice that have fallen into the ocean.
If these ice giants could be captured and towed back to an enclosure in a warm and dry area, they could be allowed to melt and produce fresh water for local use. This idea was proposed at one time for southern California, and it was suggested more recently for cities in the Middle East, but it has never been successfully put into practice. Cloud Seeding - In theory, it is possible to produce rain on demand if the conditions are correct. Rain occurs naturally when the air becomes saturated with water and water vapor condenses on minute airborne particles. When the water-covered particles become sufficiently large, they fall as rain.