That is only around 80 K$ per crossing using modern desalination plants. The internet says there are ~40 crossings per day resulting in ~14K crossings per year

That is only around 80 K$ per crossing using modern desalination plants. The internet says there are ~40 crossings per day resulting in ~14K crossings per year deriving ~3 G$ in fees for the Panama Canal Authority. At ~80 K$ per crossing that is ~1 G$ in drinkable water which is expensive, but not too onerous to be obviously economically non-viable. Also, that is nowhere near the largest desalination plant. The really big ones like the Sorek plant [1] do ~6e5 per day which would support 3 ships per day. Still only 1/10 of what is needed to support the full container capacity, but quite doable if the economics work out to support fully scaling out. [1] https://ide-tech.com/en/project/sorek-desalination-plant/ https://ide-tech.com/en/project/sorek-desalination-plant/