Published brine disposal costs run from about $0.05 per m3 for surface water discharge to about $10 per m3 for evaporation ponds, in a 2019 peer-reviewed review of desalination brine disposal. US Bureau of Reclamation studies from 2009 and 2010 put deep well injection, long pipelines and evaporation ponds at about $0.70 to $3 per m3 (our conversions). On the Inland Empire Brine Line in Southern California, the FY 2026-27 tariff works out at about $0.30 per m3 in flow charges for piped discharge, before strength and capacity charges, and about $4.52 per m3 just to tip a tanker load. None of these figures includes the cost of producing the brine. The range is wide because the routes are priced on different things: some on volume, some on pollutant load, some on capacity you pay for whether you use it or not.
This guide covers the cost of disposal only: sewer and brine line charges, hauling, deep well injection, evaporation ponds and outfalls. For the cost of a plant that concentrates or eliminates the brine, see zero liquid discharge cost. For a side-by-side comparison of the routes themselves, see brine disposal options compared. For how injection works and where it is used, see deep well injection for brine disposal.
Published disposal costs, converted to cost per m3
Every figure below is taken from the source named, with its date and region. Where the source uses gallons, million gallons or million gallons per day (mgd), we converted to m3 (1 US gallon = 3.785 litres; 1 mgd = 3,785 m3 a day) and say so. None of these figures has been adjusted for inflation.
| Route | Published figure | Per m3 | Source, date, region | What it includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Piped discharge to a dedicated brine line | Flow charge $1,141 per million gallons, plus $462 per 1,000 lb BOD and $579 per 1,000 lb TSS | $0.30 flow charge (our conversion) | SAWPA Resolution 2026-4, FY 2026-27, Inland Empire Brine Line, Southern California | Volumetric and strength charges only. Fixed capacity charges of $6,923 (pipeline) and $14,051 (treatment) per MGD of owned capacity per month come on top, about $0.18 per m3 if that capacity is fully used (our calculation) |
| Tanker discharge at a brine line station | $0.0171 per gallon for brine under 100 mg/l BOD and TSS | $4.52 (our conversion) | Same resolution, FY 2026-27 | Tipping fee only. Haulage, tanker rental and loading are extra |
| Sewer discharge in the Netherlands | €115.33 per pollution unit (v.e.); one unit = 54.8 kg oxygen demand a year | Depends on oxygen demand (organics and nitrogen) and certain metals, not volume | Delfland levy ordinance 2026, Hoogheemraadschap van Delfland (South Holland), 2026 tariff | The ordinance states that chloride and sulphate are not subject to the treatment levy. Permit limits on salt still apply |
| Surface water discharge | $0.05 to $0.30 per m3 | Same | Panagopoulos et al., 2019, global review citing 2016 and 2017 sources; no region or price year given | Cost per m3 of desalination brine rejected, as compiled in the review; components not broken down |
| Sewer discharge | $0.32 to $0.66 per m3 | Same | Panagopoulos et al., 2019 | As above |
| Deep well injection | $0.54 to $2.65 per m3 | Same | Panagopoulos et al., 2019 | As above |
| Deep well injection, one site | New well $0.8 million to $2.16 million including permitting; O&M about $939,000 a year (retrofitted abandoned well) to $1,179,000 (new well) at 1 mgd | $0.68 to $0.85 O&M only (our conversion) | Reclamation, Southern California brine study, Oct 2009 | Well capital excludes testing; O&M covers power, parts and maintenance, and chemicals and other |
| Deep well injection with a 50-mile pipeline | Annualised $17.46 million (10 mgd) and $44.62 million (30 mgd) | $1.26 and $1.08 (our conversion) | Reclamation, Central Arizona Salinity Study, Jan 2010 | Hypothetical site; capital and O&M annualised by the study at 4.875% over 50 years |
| Evaporation ponds | $3.28 to $10.04 per m3 | Same | Panagopoulos et al., 2019 | As above |
| Evaporation ponds, 1 mgd | Capital about $43 million excluding land; O&M about $390,000 a year | About $2.78 if capital is spread at 5% over 20 years (our illustration) | Reclamation, Southern California study, Oct 2009 (Irvine, California climate data) | Misted ponds: about $26 million capital, $1.06 million a year O&M |
| Evaporation ponds via pipeline, desert site | Annualised $40.26 million (10 mgd), $114.22 million (30 mgd) | $2.91 and $2.76 (our conversion) | Reclamation, Central Arizona Salinity Study, Jan 2010 | Includes the pipeline |
| Pipeline to Yuma, Arizona, about 175 miles | Annualised $14.92 million (10 mgd), $32.58 million (30 mgd) | $1.08 and $0.79 (our conversion) | Reclamation, Central Arizona Salinity Study, Jan 2010 | Brine delivered to Yuma; onward release to the Ciénega de Santa Clara not costed; a Salton Sea extension costed separately |
| Land application | $0.74 to $1.95 per m3 | Same | Panagopoulos et al., 2019 | As above |
| Landfill of dried salts | $50 to $150 per dry ton | Not per m3 | Reclamation, Oct 2009, Los Angeles area | Disposal fee only; transport extra |
Why published brine disposal costs disagree
Four things explain most of the spread in published brine disposal costs: scale, what is counted, the age of the figure and who set the price.
Scale. In the 2010 Arizona study, the same injection concept costs $1.26 per m3 at 10 mgd and $1.08 at 30 mgd. Fixed costs dominate at small flows, and most industrial brine streams are far smaller than 10 mgd (about 1,580 m3 an hour).
What is counted. Some figures are operating cost only, some include annualised capital, some include a long pipeline, and almost none include land. The Reclamation studies give capital and O&M separately or annualised; the 2019 review gives single ranges without a breakdown.
Age. Reclamation’s 2009 report, alongside SAWPA’s FY 2009-10 rate table, quoted the tanker rate for brine on what was then called the SARI line at $0.010 per gallon. The same line’s FY 2026-27 rate is $0.0171 per gallon, 71% higher in nominal terms. A 2009 figure used as today’s price will understate it.
Who sets the price. A utility tariff is a published price you can plan on. A cost from a feasibility study is an engineer’s estimate; Reclamation’s 2009 Southern California report classes its estimates as Class 5, order of magnitude, with an expected accuracy of minus 15% to 30% and plus 20% to 50%.
Does cutting brine volume cut the disposal bill?
Only the parts of the price that scale with volume. In our view, what each charge is proportional to is the first thing to establish for any route, because it decides whether making less brine saves money.
| Cost component | Scales with | Examples from the table | What reducing volume does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volumetric charges | m3 discharged | Brine line flow charge, tanker tipping fee, haulage per load, operating cost of pumping to a well | Falls in proportion |
| Load-based charges and limits | kg of pollutant | BOD and TSS charges; the Dutch treatment levy on oxygen demand and metals; permit limits on chloride in kg per day | Unchanged, because concentrating brine does not remove salt or organics |
| Capacity and capital | Design flow, paid whether used or not | Brine line capacity charges, well drilling and permitting, pond area and land, outfall pipe | Falls only if the route is sized for the lower flow from the start |
This is why the same recovery improvement can look excellent on one site and pointless on another. A site that trucks its brine pays almost entirely by volume. A site on a sewer permit capped by chloride load pays, in effect, by salt, and concentrating the brine does not help unless the salt itself is removed or recovered.
Worked example: what higher recovery does to a trucking bill
This example is hypothetical and uses one published price so the arithmetic is transparent. It is not a quote.
A reverse osmosis unit treats 20 m3/h. At 75% recovery it produces 5 m3/h of concentrate, or 43,800 m3 a year on continuous operation. If that brine is trucked to a receiving station that charges the FY 2026-27 brine line tanker rate ($4.52 per m3), the tipping fees alone are about $198,000 a year. At an assumed 25 m3 per tanker load, that is about 1,750 loads a year, each with its own haulage charge.
Raise recovery to 87.5% and the concentrate halves to 2.5 m3/h: 21,900 m3 a year, about $99,000 in tipping fees and about 876 loads. The salt leaving the site per day is the same in both cases; it is simply in half the water.
Three caveats decide whether that saving is real:
Higher recovery has its own cost. Extra membrane stages, softening or an evaporator cost money to build and run. Our posts on industrial wastewater evaporator cost and zero liquid discharge cost cover those.
More concentrated brine scales more easily. Check gypsum, silica and carbonate saturation at the higher recovery before assuming it is achievable; our industrial wastewater scaling tool runs a concentration sweep and flags where each mineral first becomes supersaturated.
The receiving facility may have a concentration limit. A station or permit that accepts 5 m3/h at one salinity may not accept 2.5 m3/h at twice the salinity.
To run the same calculation on your own stream, enter your feed flow, recovery and composition in the Brine Mass Balance calculator. It returns concentrate flow and the load of each constituent, which are the two numbers every disposal price is based on.
How to get a real number for your site
Measure what you actually discharge. Volume, variability and the loads that matter to the receiving route. If you do not have that data, an industrial wastewater audit is the place to start.
List the routes that are legally open to you. Your permit, your sewer operator and the geology or coastline decide this before price does. Our post on reverse osmosis brine disposal covers the EU and Dutch permitting side, and our overview of brine discharge regulations by region covers other markets.
Get current, dated prices. Utility tariffs, levy ordinances and written quotes from licensed hauliers and receiving facilities. Write down the date and what each price includes. When comparing hauliers or receiving facilities, we would ask each to state its rate per load or per m3, waiting and minimum-load charges, any limit on salinity or other constituents, and how long the price holds.
Split each price into volume, load and capacity. Use the table above as the template.
Test recovery. Run two or three recovery cases through the mass balance and price each one, including the cost of getting there.
Compare against treating to reduce or recover. Disposal cost is the number that justifies, or rules out, brine resource recovery or minimal liquid discharge.
Questions about brine disposal cost
What does it cost to haul brine? Haulage is priced by contract and rarely published. It depends on distance, tanker size, return trips, waiting time and the receiving facility. Price it as loads per year (annual volume divided by usable tanker volume) times the haulier’s rate per load, plus the receiving facility’s fee per m3. The brine line tanker rate above is one published example of the receiving fee.
Is sewer discharge of brine cheaper in the Netherlands? It can be, because the treatment levy is charged on oxygen demand (including nitrogen) and certain metals, not on salt: Delfland’s 2026 ordinance states that chloride and sulphate are not levied. The constraint is usually the discharge permit and what the receiving treatment plant can accept. Check your own water board’s ordinance; tariffs differ by board. Our post on industrial discharge permits in the Netherlands explains who issues what.
Why are evaporation ponds so expensive in some studies and not others? Land, liners, climate and what is included. Reclamation’s 2009 estimate for a 1 mgd pond using Irvine, California, weather data was about $43 million before land, with misting cutting capital to about $26 million at nearly three times the operating cost. Where land is cheap and evaporation is high, the per m3 cost falls; where land must be bought and double-lined, it rises.
Is deep well injection the cheapest option? Where geology and permits allow it, published operating costs are moderate, but the up-front cost is high: Reclamation’s 2009 report put a new injection well at $0.8 million to $2.16 million including permitting, before testing. It is not available everywhere; see our deep well injection post for the regulatory picture.
Should I use these figures in a business case? Use them to check whether a quote is in a plausible range and to see which cost component dominates. For a business case, replace them with current tariffs and quotes for your site, dated, and keep the volume, load and capacity parts separate.
Get a disposal cost range for your site
If you are deciding whether to keep paying for disposal or to spend money on making less brine, send us your brine flow, an analysis and the routes open to you. We will split your current or quoted price into volume, load and capacity, set it against the published benchmarks above and tell you whether a recovery case is worth testing. Send your project details or book a call; the work runs remotely from your data, wherever the site is. Brine Consulting is an independent industrial water advisory firm in Amsterdam. We sell no treatment equipment, so it makes no difference to us whether the cheaper answer turns out to be the haulier, the sewer or a concentrator.
Written by the Brine Consulting advisory team. The Brine Consulting advisory practice includes Paolo Mattiuzza, Executive Advisor, Brine Management & ZLD Systems, with more than 20 years of international experience in environmental technologies and industrial water treatment, and Ghazi Ozair, Senior Consultant, Desalination, Water Treatment & Marine Ecosystems, with more than 45 years of global experience across membrane and thermal desalination and wastewater treatment. Meet our experts.