Comment by yellowapple

As it stands, agricultural water users are massively underpaying (given the high demand and dwindling supply); correcting that would make nuclear-powered desal a lot less unattractive. Southern California in particular is a major issue, given the widespread effort to grow crops in the Mojave for whatever boneheaded reason; if they want to do that, then they should absolutely be making their own water via desal instead of robbing Northern California (via the aqueduct system) and Nevada/Arizona (via the Colorado River's mandatory downstream allocations) - and if desal water's "too expensive", then the prices of both of those sources needs jacked up to match it.

Probably won't ever happen, though, given how hard the ag sector lobbies for every direct and indirect subsidy they can get.