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The Central Valley is not a desert, I do not like this meme.

Farmers in California were running out of water 100 years ago too, and people responded with massive engineering projects to regulate water throughout the year and move it from places that were at the time water-rich to places where more water would allow using the extremely fertile land with favorable weather for agriculture.

It’s not insane to consider doing the same again.

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It's definitely insane to think that changing the direction of water as it flows downhill is anything like pumping water up over the mountains.

what is the relevance of needing to have a lot of pumps? Do you think the engineering involved is beyond the capability of the US, and your argument now is that it cannot be done?

The idea that californias water projects only direct water downhill is invalid anyway - the California aqueduct flows uphill quite a lot, and over mountains.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonston_Pumping_Plant is one of at least 5 pumping plants along the aqueduct.

Kind of interesting though in that you kill two birds with one stone. Water for the desert and a massive pump storage battery.

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