Mark Twain once famously said that everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.

This holds doubly true for sunny California and the Pacific Southwest where we’ve known for at least 75 years that at some point there would simply not be enough water to support the millions of people moving into these semi-temperate, often semi-arid lands.

We have attempted to solve the water shortage with ever-increasing storage capacity, but sheer population numbers eventually deplete those resources, since water can’t be stored unless and until it falls from the skies.

During the 1977 drought Walter Hickel, a former governor of Alaska and Secretary of the Interior, proposed sending water south from Alaska, which has one-sixth of the nation’s fresh water, and even won keen expressions of interest from Southern California water users, but these discussions ended when the rains came, although the influx of people into the Southwest continued.

Since that time our water managers have been busily rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs, while our water supplies continue to shrink.

Although Hickel’s plan may have been a little too grandiose and costly to succeed, the basic idea was sound: Namely, get fresh water from where it’s plentiful and ship it to where it’s needed.

This would be from Canada, which has the bulk of the continent’s supply, much of it draining without significant benefit, into the Arctic Ocean.

And it might not be as expensive as one would think. Since many of the rivers of the West flow from north to south, natural waterways could be used to transport much of the water, coupled with pipelines and pumping stations.

As an example, with appropriate dams, the water of huge Great Slave Lake alone might be enough to recharge the aquifer of the Colorado River.

Of course Canadians have shown no interest in exporting this valuable commodity, but then nobody’s made them a serious offer.

It seems to me that the governors of our drought-threatened Western states – led by California – might organize a task force to explore this or other possibilities of getting the fresh water we need before our wells run completely dry.

Connel Murray lives in Kelseyville, Calif.