There is actually a pretty interesting experiment going on in the Salton Sea area called the Vertical Tube Evaporation project. It uses geothermal rather than solar power, but given the region, if they were to scale up solar or wind would certainly be on the table. The Salton Sea is already basically a giant brine sink. I believe one of the plans calls for a pipeline from the Gulf of California.

http://www.usbr.gov/tsc/water/research/VTE.html http://www.sephtonwatertech.com/projects.html