My unpopular opinion: These days, all water shortages in the US are self-created.

With cheaper desalination and much, much cheaper solar options available (not to mention nuclear) we could desalinate water at the coasts and transport it via pipelines to anywhere needed — even Kansas.

As we scaled this up, the costs would fall enormously over time.

And contrary to what you might’ve read, transporting by pipeline is insanely cheap. Many of our problems have obvious and easy solutions. We just lack the will to implement them.