Older article (from 2021) but it’s even more relevant today. The eastern seaboard is getting pummeled with heavy rainfall. Especially the northeast.
A NYT investigation found that many communities are using up their groundwater at dangerous rates. Why not use the excess water the East gets to replenish what is in short supply on the other side of the Mississippi?
Now what would be really sick is finding a way to pipe in water from the sea and have a way of desalinating it along the pipeline as it gets closer and closer to its various destinations. That would be a boon for the southwest US, south Saharan Africa, and Australia, but that’s a bigger project than simply finding ways to pipe large amounts of fresh water westward in a country that already has a track record of large-scale infrastructure projects.
Yeah it would only work as intended if it was coupled with restrictions on more development. The NYT article about fading ground water supplies is a doomsday scenario for the country so at the very least, a theoretical IWS would serve to maintain and not encourage more growth