There's an even bigger problem if you're talking about the soutwhest in general: huge parts of it are thousands of feet above the Great Lakes. The energy costs

There's an even bigger problem if you're talking about the soutwhest in general: huge parts of it are thousands of feet above the Great Lakes. The energy costs of moving water horizontally are probably doable; pumping millions of acre-feet 5k feet vertically are almost certainly not (no matter what energy source you suggest using for this).