Boston’s trapped under record snow, so much that they’re considering dumping it in Boston Harbor. The West is facing another year of drought, with “megadroughts” predicted before the end of the century. When will the economics be right for that snow shipping start-up? Short answer: not for a while.
Based on this estimate, Boston is paying $11.43 to melt a ton of snow. What if they put it in a shipping container instead? You can fit 2,385 cubic feet of snow in a standard 40-foot shipping container, or about 35 tons, saving the city of Boston $408.86 in snow-melting costs. That shipping container now holds about 17,887 gallons of water, or 1/10 of what an average family of four uses in a year. 17,887 gallons will bring you $116.29 at current LA rates.
So, you could conceivably get Boston to pay you to take the snow and sell it to LA to make $525, except for that shipping & handling. And that’s gonna cost you. You could go cheap and ship it via the Panama Canal for $2,071, or you could put it on a train for $2,595. Trucking it is even pricier. None of these estimates include the costs of shoveling that snow into the container in the first place. Or the carbon costs of that shipping, which you might want to add, considering the links between climate change and extreme weather.
I might be underestimating the citizens of Boston and their determination to dig out. They might be willing to pay $1,700 to send their snow to a needy California family. Or maybe a cross-country water pipeline is looking like a bargain investment for future storms and droughts.
