Supplementing California’s water supply via desalinization of ocean water sounds more plausible to me than piping it in from the Great Lakes but it’s not without its downsides either. So far there hasn’t been a lot of study into the long-term environmental impact of pumping all that extra-salty brine back into the ocean, especially if it were to happen on a large scale. In the very least it would likely create undersea dead zones around the dumping areas.
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unless this was truly taken up on a massive scale, the salinity increase would be negligible in that volume of water. daily surface evaporation is already many hundreds of factors greater, and currents of of California are fed from the arctic which as we all know is producing a lot more fresh water then in past year. so it might not be that big of an impact.
i fully agree though that prior to an mass undertaking impact studies should be done, and regardless of impact whatever measures possible should be taken to minimize all negative environmental impacts. multiple dispersed exit points, that can be switched on and off based on salinity measurements might be one mitigation solution. the salt sludge could be also potentially be pumped to evaporative holding pools and then used. maybe it could be sold to mcdonalds for seasoning the pink meat sludge 
haha
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So the Joads will be moving back to Ardmore, or wherever?
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Especially if you look, not just at the water consumption, but also the carbon footprint for so.e of these other crops. The only reason it’s economical to truck produce across the continent, is subsidized oil. If we started charging a more realistic price for gasoline, a lot of this would sort itself out.
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Who’s to blame?
http://extragoodshit.phlap.net/index.php/whos-to-blame-for-californias-drought/#more-302328
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