What's important to you? Water, maybe?
I was preparing dinner tonight. Midway through filling up a pot, the water stopped. Just stopped...one last dribble, then nothing.
No water.
We live in the boonies and use well water. The pump failed. No pump, no water. The irony is, we live on a lake. At least I could go down to the lake and scoop up a five gallon bucket and boiled it on the stove. But the lake is frozen. No big deal, if I really needed the water, I'd surely drill a hole in the ice and get me some. But what about the people out west who are really, seriously, about to be without water? I ran to the grocery store and bought several of those 2 1/2 gallon dispenser bottles. I can brush my teeth and rinse off a dish or two. But what happens to these places like Las Vegas or Pheonix when they've drained Lake Mead and the Colorado River?
I'm inconvienced because I can't draw water from my well. Imagine how inconvenient it will be when entire cities can't draw any more water.
Buy stock in Nestle. They'll sell you bottled water from the Yangtze River.
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But I give you extra credit for a witty response. 
The Great Lakes incredibly valuable water resources are governed by a joint commission of state, provincial and national governments. The members of the governing body have long understood how very precious these bodies of water are to human survival and economics.
Extraction of water out of the watershed is prohibited without consent of the international commission. And the philosophy on extraction has been that water removed must be replaced with equal amounts of water of suitable quality. At minimum, the expensive project to move water to the west would require equally expensive projects to replace that water.
A map of the watershed is provided below. You'll notice that in SE WI and NE IL the watershed doesn't go very far inland in places it's less than 5 miles from the lake...
...this has already caused water utilities difficulties in cities and suburbs that span the divide of the watershed. Much of the ground water sufficient for municipal supply in SE Wisconsin contains radioactive contaminants above safe levels for drinking. Radioactive contamination above safe levels is not a problem with the water in Lake Michigan. There have been decades long struggles to get approval for diluting ground water with lake water to achieve safe standards for drinking for communities just 5-10 miles from the watershed.
The domestic and international legal difficulties in getting approval to move water a thousand or more miles to the west would be more than substantial. It's hard to see how it could be done short of international conflict.
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... to the deserts of Washington, Oregon, and California.
And then there was the North American Water and Power Alliance proposal of the 1950's to completely destroy the natural watersheds and deserts of the entire North American continent.
Unlike the U.S.A., which backed away from such environmentally destructive mega-engineering projects, the Soviet Union did not, and China is still at it, full speed ahead.
about how we were using spring water at my house for a few years before installing a well.
Best tasting water ever. Even with parts and pieces of dead frog Mr Pipi found caught in the outflow pipe in the springhouse. Now that water flows into two ponds on the property, and we use a well, and like yours, it's iron infused.
If the water sits too long in one place, it stains everything brown.
The inside of my dishwasher (white plastic) gets horrible looking after about two or three months, and I don't even use it but maybe once a week. Various things remove the rust, like white vinegar spray, commercial rust stain remover, dishwasher cleaner, etc.
I can't even imagine what our innards must look like 
In California's Central Valley, the future is last summer.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10407435