It is also mostly in "the wrong place". I keep reading about these fantasies of pumping water from large rivers in the MidWest (like the Missouri or Mississippi

It is also mostly in "the wrong place". I keep reading about these fantasies of pumping water from large rivers in the MidWest (like the Missouri or Mississippi) to the deserts of Utah or Arizona. The altitude difference is enormous - every drop of water would have to be pumped uphill at least one mile in altitude to get it from, say Kansas City (which is about 800 feet above sea level) up over the Rockies into the places were people should not be living. And what makes it worse is that the majority of water used in those states goes towards agriculture (82% in the case of Utah), where farmers pay less than 1% of the cost of the water they use.