I'm not denying that there are people who want to live there. It's obvious there are (and that there are growth trends, particularly as snowbirds seem to be discarding Florida as their first choice).

The dispute is about scale: a couple of million retirees equal a lot of speculative housing value, but they don't justify a megaproject to deliver water to the middle of the desert. That would require population migration on a scale not seen in over a century in the US.