Is turning it into a solid too energy consuming? The main problem seems to have been it clogging up the multi stage system. If you can dump it you should be able to turn it into a solid in a separate setup.
Salt is very hydrophilic, I believe this means that it's very difficult to get the last bit of water out. Further, if you leave dry salt out in a humid environment and it naturally pulls humidity out of the air.
It collects on top though. Fleur de sel is made that way i believe. You arguably dont need to get all the water out of there as long as you have a steady stream of water with high salt content coming in.
Much of the price of that is coming from not breaking the formed patterns during harvest.
The desert is far away. The ocean is much closer. Issues with increasing salinity go down drastically if you pump just a bit further into the ocean, where it is rapidly spread by currents. If that's considered too difficult/costly/energy demanding then pumping to a desert would be that much worse.
Most deserts are inhabited by endangered or threatened species. There aren't actually a lot of deserts so lifeless that you could avoid environmental activists getting in the way, at least not in the US.
US deserts are full of life; they're very far from lifeless. They're nothing like the endless sand dunes we envision when we think of the Sahara desert, Saudi Arabia, or the planet Arrakis.
