We don’t because who wants to pay for that? A long time ago you were talking about the Greatest Generation. OK. Fine. I can see them agreeing to pay for big projects. Generations nowadays though? Yeah, not so much.
I suppose at a state level California has the money and could pay for canals to California. But why wouldn’t they put it into desalination plants instead if it really came to that? And suppose California just uses their bottomless checkbook to desalinate or move water. What about all the other states out west? Who will pay for water to Arizona for instance?
This is another one that is a hard problem.
If it was a trivial solution it'd have already been done, it's always good to start with the principle "smarter people have thought about this" to try to understand a problem than thinking it's a trivial issue to be solved and no one else is as smart as you are.
I mean, the Romans did it, and it was a huge infrastructure project for a government unusually good at them. It’s fair to ask if the particular government in question just can’t do things on that scale.
Yeah, the Romans did it, we don't live in Roman Empire times though.
Moving water is far, far more difficult than any other type of infrastructure we build.
They already do this.
The Owens Valley was turned into a desert to divert water to LA. There are aqueducts moving water from the Colorado River to LA and Phoenix which are both hundreds of miles away from the river.
The 1974 film Chinatown was a fictionalized version of these events.
Barring that, surely there are other ways we can handle the brine than just discharging it right back to the ocean, even if they make the desalination process somewhat more costly. Ultimately, water is infinitely more valuable than money.
Why don't we encourage people to move to where the water already is? There is plenty of room for people in Great Lakes/Rust Belt cities of Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo, Toledo, Erie, Gary, etc.
People move to where good jobs are and I never think of the places you listed for good jobs.
Retired people generally want to live where the temperatures are warmer and don't have to deal with tons of snow.
Sure, people want to live where the temperature is warm all year, unfortunately those places don't have water. Water sits at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy. Winter is also moderating pretty quickly in the Midwest, barely any snow last winter.