See those headlines the other day about the ongoing drought out here in the West, especially in California? Lake Mead, the massive reservoir outside of Las Vegas that provides much of the water for Nevada, Arizona, and California is down like 20 feet from where it should be, and the warning signs are around that unless we get a change in the winters from the relatively dry last few years there could be a real water cruch around these parts. What to do? What to do?

There are folks around who think the solution is to drain Lake Powell and fill Lake Mead with its contents. Don’t know how viable or wise a solution that would be.

Here’s the thing I don’t understand. I’m just 4 hours from the Gulf of California and 5 1/2 hours drive from the Pacific Ocean – neither an insignificant body of water, right? – so why hasn’t anyone figured out large-scale desalination of ocean water as a long-term solution for the Great American Southwest? I mean, the technology is there – it’s used to cool nuclear plants, right? And it’s not as if someone hasn’t thought of this already. It can be done. And screw the damned environmentalists – it this ought to be just a start, what’s needed is the same thing in greater numbers or on an even larger scale than anyone could imagine.

There’s so much attention paid to highway infrastructure and stupid light rail, why can’t that energy and those dollars be spent creating a massive water infrastructure that would supply the West with all the water it could possibly need for the rest of life as we know it? And while we’re at it, why not use Great Lakes water to feed the Ogalalla Aquafier and prevent that from drying up as well? It’s not like the water is gonna disappear – water is everywhere and constantly going everywhere. And, like Yoko Ono once sang, we’re all water too.

Hell, we sent a man to the moon, didn’t we? Like Marvin Gaye once sang, let’s get it on.