Small coastal nuclear power plants and desalinization...
Sell the power, and sell the fresh water.
It may cost more, but as a percentage of the total water provided, it doesn’t need to mean that water will double in cost. If you get 25% of your water from desalinization, the higher cost is spread across the 100%.
If it costs double to deliver the 25%, the cost of all water would only go up 25%. That 25% could relive a lot of pressure on our water supply needs. It would also make it possible to leave more of it in the lakes in Northern California.
We should also support water collection as a way of reducing the needs of piped in water during periods when we do get rain. If we save millions of acre feet of water needed during periods around the wet season, that would leave more water from reservoirs for the drier periods of the year.
If some of this cost could be covered by the sale of the power from the nuclear plant, it could become quite cost effective.
Why aren’t our leaders working on this?
Plus, the salt can be sold to cold-weather states for winter!