Is your job safe?

[Gamerprinter]

Well California might be able to use large scale desalinators for water, but the drought issue is more than just California - Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada don't have an ocean to desalinate, and they have the same problem as California (no water).

[jon404]

Water, they say, is the only thing on earth that runs uphill towards money. In the USA, we have spent unbelievable amounts of money on huge dams on every river out West. In the past, not for water to drink, but for irrigation for the farms. California and parts of Arizona are PERFECT for high-value crops... if you irrigate... but in many places the clay beneath the soil is salty and the salts leach out and wreck the fields.

The water also lets us build houses for the people who can move here since there's water. Hoover Dam, Shasta Dam, etc. Here in San Diego, water from high in the Rockies, from the Colorado River to the farms in the Imperial valley, and then to San Diego. More water from the Sacramento River, way to the north... pumped into the San Joaquin valley for the farms, and then over the hills to Los Angeles.

But we are hitting the limit now, with the drought. Developers want to run a big pipe down from the Columbia River, in Washington state. If we could ever get water rights. Technically, we can do it... after Grand Coulee dam, we can build ANYTHING related to water. But that new water would let the developers build houses for another 20 million people. And it gets you back to that old song... "Don't you know just what you've got ...pave paradise, put up a parking lot."

[meganredfern]

My job appears to be safe as well!