The committee needs to go no farther than Glasgow to get a thorough education on ways to desalt brackish water and seawater. For more than 25 years, the DuPont Co. has been selling and improving membranes used to produce fresh water. This form of reverse osmosis is a way to get fresh water. Other methods are evaporation and distillation, direct freezing and some too complicated to list here. The point is water authorities throughout the United States and the rest of the world are assuring themselves of a long-range supply without having to depend on streams, reservoirs and aquifers that can dry up periodically.
Water covers most of the Earth.
We have the Delaware River and Bay, and even the Atlantic Ocean, as possibly the more reliable supply we seek. Of course, desalinization has its drawbacks. The principal one is cost, although the per-gallon price keeps dropping and if other supplies become scarcer, that difference might no longer exist. You also have to get rid of the brine and chemicals once they are removed. Pumping water from the Delaware might prove expensive.