The Boy Scouts taught me how me how to desalinize water with a few sticks, a couple pots & some tin foil. That wouldn’t work on the scale they need but it would (should) still be pretty easy. Of course being Cali., with all their regulations & unions, it would end up costing MUCH more that it should. Still, a couple wind turbines, a few solar panels, an electric coil, 2 collection tanks & a pipeline leading to the lakes they want to fill are really all that’s required for one plant. Streisand could fund it all with her takings from one concert.
I expect desalinization is farther out than the Columbia River pipeline. For a couple decades now Kalifornia has drooled over the prospect of running a 24 foot diameter pipeline from the mouth of the Columbia, down the coast range, to the central valley. Taken from near the mouth , the Columbia would never miss it, moving the sea water about 6 inches farther inland. If it helps keep Kalifornians in California I’m all for it. They’ve been quiet about the idea for a few years but this dry time might very well fire up the conversation again and it seems like the kind of “shovel ready” job the Kenyan would love? And as with Patton crossing the Rhine it would give me new enthusiasm for piddling in the river.