Growing up in Michigan, I was certainly aware of water. The Great Lakes state is surrounded by, well, the Great Lakes. It also rained a lot. Winter was, as I recall, always cloudy and drizzly, though I think I remember a sunny day in late January in 1969, but I could be wrong.

I thought of my overly wet upbringing as I read a recent Colorado Politics story about a looming deadline for the states involved in the Colorado River Compact, a 1922 agreement of the states in the Colorado River basin to properly manage water use from the origin here in the Centennial State until the last trickle gets to Mexico. As you likely know, our two-decade drought has had a massive impact on water availability, with the famous Lake Mead “bathtub ring” clearly illustrating the crisis we in the west face.

The seven states are pushing up against a deadline that requires at least a partial solution of how they are going to use 15% less water next year, or have restrictions imposed by the feds. Even in the good years of plenty of water, there have been tensions between the compact states. Now, things are, of course, worse. The upper basin states, especially Colorado, have never used their full allotment, but have reserved their right to that water as populations climb. The downriver states are hurting the most, with Lake Powell and Lake Mead dropping so low that hydroelectric power production is threatened, a new threat caused by the crisis.

So, should we all stop watering our lawns? Well, maybe, that would help a little, but by far the largest consumers of water are agricultural interests, especially in Arizona and California. A while back, when my daughter’s husband was stationed at a Marine base in Yuma, Arizona, I visited the area during the winter months. I was amazed by the vast fields of winter vegetables and other crops being grown in what, by all rights, is a desert. Huge trucks hauled massive loads of lettuce, broccoli and other foodstuffs to processors that then shipped them off to a nation hungry for fresh produce in winter months up north. It is difficult to get across the scale of these operations, and it makes a lot of sense that that is where most of the water is going.

So, there is far too little water in a part of the country that really needs it, while much of the eastern United States often has too much water, with flooding and other water damage. Would or could it ever make sense to look for ways to bring eastern water to the west?

At first blush, the idea might sound nuts. We would be talking billions of dollars of infrastructure and years to make it happen. But, my fellow Americans, that is what we Americans do: big stuff.

There already exists more than 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines in the U.S. that deliver hundreds of billions of tons of liquid petroleum products every year. The National Pipeline Mapping System, part of the Department of Transportation, has a really cool map of the nation’s system, and a helpful interactive tool you can use to see what pipelines are located in any county in the country. So, we know we are pretty good at pipelines.

We are also pretty good (except for Texas) at electrical grids. The eastern and western grids operate separately, but they are connected and in times of crisis in one area of the country can send power to where it is needed. Again, we build big stuff.

So, how about we start a massive infrastructure project that would create a huge number of jobs to bring eastern water to the west?

I’m far from the first to think of this idea. We know how to build pipelines, and pipes that transport water are already well understood. And unlike oil and gas pipelines, should a water pipe spring a leak it will be inconvenient but very likely not an environmental catastrophe.

It is certainly true that this would rival the interstate highway system in complexity and breadth, but we did build the highways, and it is hard to imagine our nation (and our commerce) without them. Interest rates are (relatively) low, meaning that federal spending on construction would add less to the deficit and debt, but frankly, if investing in our nation’s future isn’t worth the money, I don’t know what is.

Though there would be an initial start-up process that would likely take a couple of years, much like the highway system, we would not need to wait until everything was done to begin taking advantage of the program. Some water would begin to flow fairly quickly. As a kid, I remember when driving to my grandparents’ farm in Iowa, we had to connect from Interstate-94 via a two-lane road to I-80, as the highway system wasn’t quite all connected. But that small stretch of less-capable roadway did not mean we didn’t benefit from the interstates once we got on them.

There are, of course, many things to figure out before the first shovel of dirt is turned. We must ensure that we don’t trade one environmental problem for another by taking the “wrong” water from the “wrong” place, and many technical questions remain. And as with the gas pipelines, issues of where and how they go will require careful attention.

But the fact that there are challenges does not mean that they cannot be overcome. Had we, say, started this project when we were five years into the drought, we’d be well on the way to meaningful water transfers today. If we start now, a decade from now, we likely will be seeing benefits, and will be glad we got busy when we did.

I know this is a dramatic and massive idea, but again, that is what we in this country do — the tough stuff. And if we don’t act on the water issues soon, you may find that certain crops are truly seasonal, and you won’t be having lettuce salads in the winter.

It’s time to think big.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.