“Run for the hills! A flood is coming!” “Dart down to the basement! A tornado’s on the way!”

You can tell when a flood or tornado starts. But droughts are different. They happen sloooooowly. When rain stops coming, no one knows how long it will last. But one thing is sure: California gets drier every day. How can the thirsty state solve its water problem?

Here’s one idea that’s floating around. Some people want to haul an iceberg all the way from the Arctic to California. Icebergs are a good source of fresh water. But how could an iceberg pass through warm seas without melting? “No problem,” some say. “We’ll wrap a harness around it. We’ll cover it in insulating cloth.” To most people, that sounds way too expensive—and maybe downright crazy!

Others like the idea of desalination. If you look closely at that word, you might be able to tell what it means. “De” means separation. “Saline” means salty. Many Californians want to take the salt of ocean water and turn it into drinking water. If you lived right next to the ocean but had no drinking water, you might think the same thing! All day long you would see the sea waves bobbing up and down. Mmm…wouldn’t it make you thirsty?

The good news is, desalination might really work. Salt molecules are bigger than water molecules. In the desalination process, water moves through a film. The tiny water molecules go on to the other side. The bigger salt molecules stay behind. Every two gallons of seawater make one gallon of fresh water. The extra salt goes back out to sea.

Good solution—or bad? Environmentalists worry about how the extra salt will affect sea life. People in California worry because desalination plants don’t come cheap. That will make their water bills high. But which is worse: expensive water or no water at all?