Cape Town had this problem when the high-IQ African National Congress-dominated Parliament in Pretoria reacted negatively to an absolutely necessary construction project. The project would have been a much larger dam for the western Cape to capture more of the seasonal rains (important factoid here - down there the rains come in 7-year cycles, seven wet years followed by seven dry years). The ANC response was - hold your breath - that a much larger dam as proposed would leave more concrete surface exposed during the dry years, thus embarrassing the ANC. Yah, as they say in Afrikaans. They turned it down and it was left to France and as I recall, the Netherlands to put together offshore desalination facilities for Cape Town on a provisional basis pending a long-term solution.

There's been talk of a desalination plant or two for the Southwest but these take time and money to be put in place. Looks like another Afghanistan here, not well thought-out.