Letters: Need water? Use the ocean

Re “Calming the West’s water wars,” Opinion, May 3

“Water, water, everywhere / Nor any drop to drink.” So wrote the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Southwestern United States is faced with this problem, and all officials can do is fight among themselves.

A solution stares them in the face: the ocean, which has more water than they could ever need. How to get it? Do what others have done: Desalinate.

Aruba, a small but well-populated island, gets its water from the sea around it. We can too. The technology is there to be used.

The states that fight for the limited fresh water of various rivers could band together and build the necessary plants to provide a virtually endless supply of potable, pure water. They could share the costs of building the desalinization plants and the ongoing maintenance of the facilities.

Every day that goes by without this solution only exacerbates the problem.

Warren H. Kross

Cathedral City

This article reminds me that issues regarding water have changed little in the last 125 years. One recalls the saying of ranchers settling the arid Western frontier: “Whiskey’s for drinking; water’s for fighting over.”

Stanford Noel

Pacific Palisades

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