How soon before they start pumping and transferring water from the Great Lakes to the West??

[hunter]

49. Desalinating water is less trouble and costs less.

Shutting down farms for their water rights is even easier.

Farmers who couldn't afford desalinated water from the Pacific or Gulf Coast certainly wouldn't be able to afford more expensive water imported from the Great Lakes. Therefore it's not going to happen. The cost of desalinating or moving water has little to do with human law or policy, it's all about physics.

Most water in the arid West is used for farm irrigation, a lot of it for unnecessary things like alfalfa exports to Saudi Arabia or feed for the factory farm dairy industry.

The factory farm dairy industry can move to places with abundant water. It's a lot easier to transport cheap ground beef and dairy products from wet places to dry places than it is to transport the water required to raise cows in dry places.

Unfortunately farming in the arid West is a religious thing. Nobody wants to tell the farmers that God has left a recording on His Holy Help Line telling them to find other work or move elsewhere, that their prayers for rain will not be answered. We humans burned all those fossil fuels, now we face the consequences.

We don't have to be cruel to these farmers. We could help them find other work, maybe even pay them to restore their familiar lands to something resembling a natural state, letting them keep grandma's place as a vacation retreat.

Farming isn't anything sacred. People in other industries often have to find different work or move elsewhere when market conditions change.