to complete the answer, there are actual pumps to bring the colorado river waters all the way to Los Angeles, this is bonkers. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wiki

to complete the answer, there are actual pumps to bring the colorado river waters all the way to Los Angeles, this is bonkers. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Colorado-River-Aqueduct-Map1.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Colorado... And Los Angeles also gets some water by another gigantic water system coming all the way from northern California collecting the melting snow from the high Sierras. "Los Angeles" is a bit of the loose term because the central valley is connected to the same system for agricultural needs. I think it's really the bleak future to look at as an example, Phoenix is still small enough that it doesn't yet use more than its alotment of the Colorado river. But clearly the article is looking at artificially propping up Phoenix in the future the way Los Angles is right now. Edit: and in the terminator 2 movie, this is not a rain ditch, it’s supposed to be an actual river.