take away and turn in another direction
The sentence is not included here so it makes answering this question more difficult. When a person is talking about diverting water or other resources, often they intend to stop or split the supply of the resources going one place and take a portion or all to another place. If a car is diverted due to construction, it is removed from it's original route and takes another path. A person's attention is also often said to be diverted. When this happens his attention is no longer focused on A, and now it is solely on B.