Department of Agriculture

[Taem]

1) If the government is functioning as an insurer, then how can they be sued for negligence? It isn't their obligation to provide water, is it? It's their obligation to pony up money in the event of drought.

I don't know. According to wiki, crop insurance can be purchased through private entities or, as you said, from the USDA. My issue is with the USDA claiming it's goals are:

promote agricultural trade and production, work to assure food safety, protect natural resources, foster rural communities and end hunger in the United States

It seems to me that to accomplish these goals successfully would require preventative planning on the USDA's part. I'm sure many would argue that same points the USDA does on their website:

Disaster and Drought Assistance
Drought is a weather phenomenon plaguing agriculture since civilizations began farming and ranching as organized ways to feed themselves. Drought that affects growing or grazing quality affects about a third of the nation's counties each year.

However, I'd counter that if you can't deliver what you promise, then perhaps there is credence to a lawsuit. "A third of the nations counties each year..." You'd think this might be an issue to address!

2) Desalinization is expensive. Solar power is expensive. Are you sure that putting the two together would be cheaper than just accepting that crops will fail some years? Perhaps in some more food-scarce, water-abundant world, but I'm doubting it for this one.

I don't believe initially the costs would offset. But firstly, it seems your looking at the picture of crop failures VS payout, as opposed to crop failures = raising prices for food = higher cost for everyone doing damage to an economy already in a recession VS the cost of the plant. In real life, a desalinization plant is without a doubt expensive to not only run, but maintain, and equipping a factory to run on at least 50% solar power, even with all of technologies leaps and bounds in the industry, would also be expensive as a start up. The payoff would not come for years down the road for the coastal cities which built the plants; collecting a water tax from the inland counties would take a long time to repay the costs. Which company would be insane enough to start a venture which would most likely cost millions, and not offer a return for years, if ever? None, of course, so this would have to be a national issue, something the US government decided was mandatory. Are we at that point now? Obviously not, but my theorycrafting was merely to point out that drought *is* preventable (part of the argument for the supposed lawsuit), and I believe the costs to maintain the desalinization plants by the coastal cities would be near nothing after the water tax and solar energy. The real issue would commissioning the plants to be built in the first place. But then again, I could be completely incorrect and the cost to run a desalinization plant might be so prohibitively expensive, that they would always run in the red regardless of how much solar energy or tax help they received. I really don't know; it was just a thought.

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The biggest problem is that, while it may help out the coastal areas, the majority of the farms are in the midwest and too far away from really large saltwater bodies for it be effective, especially since we don't have the infrastructure in place to physically transport the water into the heartland so there's yet more added cost to your plan.

Indeed, and this could be the *real* deal-breaker. Brokering water-pipes from coastal cities to the nations inner-lakes would not only cost billions to build, but of course there would be geographical impact studies to fund, private properties that would have to be moved/bought... and new laws made on a national scale for who paid whom what. Yes, it would be a mess indeed.