Water Shortages in the US Southwest

As many are aware, the American Southwestern states have some serious water shortage issues. Fewer are aware that much of what water does rain or snow into the US Southwestern states flows out to California and Mexico via the Colorado River. Due to longstanding legal claims due to earlier settlement of Mexico and California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado must allow much of the water they do get as rain or snow fall to flow on to California and Mexico where most of that water is used for drinking or irrigation. Fair or not that is the legal situation. Further to make the situation worse, evaporation of river water on the way to the mouth of the river is far from zero.

However, it is of interest to note that both California and Mexico have access to virtually limitless supplies of salt water from the Pacific Ocean, and desalinization is economical enough that it is widely used in the middle east to make drinking,and even irrigation water. Arizona, Utah and Nevada have very little salt water, and what they do have is much saltier than Pacific Ocean water which makes desalinization much more difficult and expensive.

My thought is that the states of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado should seek to make a deal with California and Mexico to the effect that the inland states should pay for the construction operation and maintenance of large scale desalinization plants in California and Mexico, and in exchange for each unit volume of fresh water produced and delivered from these plants to California or Mexico, those states may withdraw and use a unit volume of water from the Colorado river up to the legal limit that California and Mexico may use.

What California and Mexico gain from this is that all the money spent on construction, maintenance and operation of these plants will be spent in California and Mexico. Furthermore, these plants can be expanded in capacity and if legally permitted, the excess production sold at a profit, or possibly piped uphill to Arizona, or Nevada.

All of the power to do this could be supplied by large scale solar power farms in any of the Southwestern states or Mexico. As you may be aware, solar power prices are falling rapidly.