Agreed. Let's first try and "colonize" places like Nevada. Getting safe drinking water to many major urban centres could become a challenging engineering problem in the upcoming decades, much more worthwhile to solve than living on Mars.
Some big urban areas already need to rely on interbasin transfers for their water supply: LA, NYC, San Diego, Mexico City, SLC, Denver. Tunnels for water would actually be a sensible and 'boring' pivot for the Boring Company.