There's some pretty bad thinking masquerading as commentary here. How the hell is it "stealing" water to follow the legal means of requesting water that no one currently uses or has rights to and going through the formal, public process of letting the official state government office tasked with managing the resource determine whether you can use what no one else is? When you "steal" something you just take it, you don't go through a public, formal legal process to be allocated the right to it by the state. Nor do you get a gazillion agreements with the federal government to control any environmental impacts. Cripes...the ignorance of some extremists on this page is staggering.

Even if you could buy ranches in California...you couldn't get the water from them. The water is controlled by the STATES not by farms. That's why Nevada State government needs to determine what water can be used from the north down here. And the state of California isn't going to let one drop leave that state to come here -- have you seen the problems THEY have with getting enough water in SoCal? Their problems are way bigger than ours...and even with that the powerful environmental community in California is hesitant about desalination -making that a limited option for California to do even for themselves. So if they are only going to do desal in a limited way for themselves why do you think they'd let us do it on their coast? What does that gain them?

If anyone thinks Nevada has more political clout than California, they've been tweaking crack too much in their lives. Count the Congressional delegations. And by the way, California doesn't need our money -- not only does California dwarf our political clout, they've got plenty of money to do whatever they want for themselves.