People wanted to really help the enviroment, really protect species and wildlife they would do this:
1) Any City of greater than 100K people within 100 miles of an ocean must use Desalination or recycled water to provide it’s citizens with freshwater.
2) Any City of greater than 1 million people must use Desalination with pipeline and Recycled water to account for 90% of water use.
3) Beachfront access for pipelines for desalination must be accessible for all of the above.
This alone would create two realities. First it would allow for return of multiple estuaries and river flow in the US. Second, it would free up water for use in irrigation for crops and not toilets. Third, it would shift back onto the cities the environmental costs that they have burdened rural america with.
I count three realities.