This was common practice throughout history. The Egyptians built canals, lakes, and basins to divert water from the Nile and vastly expand the amount of livable

This was common practice throughout history. The Egyptians built canals, lakes, and basins to divert water from the Nile and vastly expand the amount of livable area and farmland. People think the Great Pyramids are a wonder of the world, but the irrigation projects were potentially more impressive and impactful. More recently, the Libyan government built the Great Man-Made Project, which was thousands of kilometers of pipes pumping water from desert aquifers in the south to the cities in the north, which sounds like one of those crazy dictator megalomaniac ego projects but actually had a tremendous amount of impact (assuming there's as much water in the aquifers they're draining as they think).