Waves crash near the Carlsbad Desalination plant in Carlsbad, Calif. The plant, opened more than six years ago, transforms water from the Pacific Ocean into drinking water. Credit: Sandy Huffaker/Corbis/Getty

Anybody with a 5-year-old’s knowledge of geography might come up against this conundrum: There’s a water shortage in the Western United States. Right next door, there’s the Pacific Ocean. Why can’t we take some of that big, blue body of water and move it into the increasingly parched territory that borders it?

The short answer, of course, is that there’s salt in the ocean, which isn’t good for people, plants and many other living creatures. But as shortages mount, there’s increasing interest in the complicated process of desalination, or pulling out salt on a massive scale so that water can be put to use by the thirsty populations who live nearby.

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Wells are drying up in California. The Colorado River is thinning to a dribble. The levels of Lake Mead and Lake Powell — the two biggest reservoirs in the United States […]

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