National water pipeline project

The other problem is you should not be growing crops that require lots of water in the desert in the first place. If we would work with nature there will be little or no major consequences in the future.

People seem to actually care a little more today than our ancestors. It has been a while since one of our rivers caught on fire. We still ignore some of the most devastating problems. Most of our estuaries are now dead zones. The dead zone created by the Mississippi river is measured in thousands of square miles and a direct result of improper agriculture practices of 30+ states and Canada.

Just cleaning up the mess we currently are making would be a great first step. Then cleaning up the mess we have made in the past would be another great step. It is not our use of water that is the problem but how we use it. We can use the water from a river over and over again as it flows to the sea as long as we return the water to the river as clean as we took it. This also applies to our lakes.

Our desert aquafers were dropping before we started pumping the water out of them. That means they will not recover. How long they last is determined by how fast we pump them dry or unusable. Plus eventually the natural salts in ground water will render the land useless eventually as well unless their is enough rain to wash the salts back out of the soil. If we are going to farm the desert we should grow desert crops and only water them in the rare occasion of drought.

Vox said:

Speaking of water..........Denial is a river in Egypt.

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You don't live here, you don't know about how we handle water.

Ignorance is an ocean.

beefheart said:

You don't live here, you don't know about how we handle water.

Ignorance is an ocean.

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A specific comment was made in this thread about the San Juan River. I'll come back to that in another post.
A National Water Pipeline system is absolutely necessary in this Century as part of a next gen Infrastructure Plan.
I had an old thread on here about that but can't find it. It got batted away from all sides.

Flood to drought; East to West; plenty of available energy in the Keystone states; new and necessary jobs, along with maintainance;
What's not to like here? Consider Louisiana sinking over 50-year time-lapse photography.
That's one drain to the West, needing a desalination plant of its own further west of Houston, which already has one.

On the way back from Oklahoma City a few years ago, itself a new age city, I left I-44 at Springfield, MO.
I then took brand-new US 20 to Cairo, IL. Cairo is at the confluence of the Ohio R. and the Mississippi.
Pretty cool view from the tower. This is a flood region, with berms on the Missouri side.

I drove on top of those berms for miles.
They're just not that hard to cross with water pipelines, with say the help of advanced Archimedes' Screws.
Water pipelines will necessarily have to follow the Eisenhower Interstates, US highways, and major state roads.
The only problem I see through Southern Missouri along US 20 is that it goes through the Mark Twain National Forest ...

azgreg said:

The topic has come up a number of times.

Here's an older link. https://www.livescience.com/43176-drought-pipeline-water-projects-arid-west.html

More recent: https://www.freep.com/story/news/lo...est-our-future-says-nasa-scientist/100301326/

I think the way is desal plants for California. It will be expensive but should be cheaper than piping in water from the northern midwest.

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The Sierra Club is against desalination. Need I say more. It's over. Between them and the public unions - who also support the Sierra Club to a certain degree regarding candidate funding - it is not going anywhere past sound bites.

chuckiechan said:

The Sierra Club is against desalination. Need I say more. It's over. Between them and the public unions - who also support the Sierra Club to a certain degree regarding candidate funding - it is not going anywhere past sound bites.

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It's already under way in San Diego. Carlsbad Desal Plant - Home

With that being said there have been some failures in California desal for sure. The project in Monterey Peninsula faltered but there are efforts to restart the project in Santa Barbara.

I don't see another option for the West coast regardless of what the Sierra Club says.

We used to call this extortion:
Environmental - Carlsbad Desal Plant

More than a water supply project, the desalination plant will preserve and enhance air quality and the environment.
To include Wildfire Reforestation by planting 5,000 trees in areas damaged by local wildfires.
View our final Marine Life Mitigation Plan and final Energy Minimization and Green House Gas Reduction Plan (appendices not included).

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Mitigation may be all and good, but when it serves as a hammer to get environmental projects done in exchange for permits to build the desal plant, it’s graft. These costs will be borne by the taxpayers due to the leverage the Sierra Club has over elected officials. Why is it necessary for a desal plan to plant trees to get a permit? Can’t you just go to the legislature and ask for state taxpayer money rather than take it out of the hides of Carlsbad’s rate payers as if it were simply a “mob tax” on the owners.

In simple terms “we will let you build your turd farm, if you will build us a library”.

trouble13 said:

With all the recent talk about infrastructure, there's one thing I never hear anyone discuss. Ways to combat the effects of droughts. I would like to see a national pipeline put in place that connects all our resiviors. This way if say Oregon has so much water in its resiviors that they are actually opening damn to divert it into stream it could instead be sent into a pipeline that could carry it to places that have low resiviors.

Just curious what you all see as the pros and cons to my idea

Sent from my SM-T800 using Tapatalk

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It is a wonderful idea, and could be used to relieve areas that are prone to flooding as well as providing water to drought prone areas but it will never happen. The reason that it will never happen is that water is controlled by criminal cartels who regulate it in the west to ensure they can charge the maximum amount. You cannot charge top dollar for something that is abundant, so you must create artificial shortages.

jdog said:

It is a wonderful idea, and could be used to relieve areas that are prone to flooding as well as providing water to drought prone areas but it will never happen. The reason that it will never happen is that water is controlled by criminal cartels who regulate it in the west to ensure they can charge the maximum amount. You cannot charge top dollar for something that is abundant, so you must create artificial shortages.

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Uh, the west isn't "artificially short" on water. There really isn't any out there.

Critter7r said:

Uh, the west isn't "artificially short" on water. There really isn't any out there.

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Shows how little you actually know about the situation. There is more water in the west than we could ever use, they simply find ways to keep us from getting it. There was a plan in the 1970's to build a pipeline from BC to Southern Ca. but the California Water Authority killed it. They then cut off supply from the Delta via the "smelt controversy".

Point is, there is no water shortage in this country, only corrupt governments and corporation who get rich exploiting resources for mass profit.

jdog said:

It is a wonderful idea, and could be used to relieve areas that are prone to flooding as well as providing water to drought prone areas but it will never happen. The reason that it will never happen is that water is controlled by criminal cartels who regulate it in the west to ensure they can charge the maximum amount. You cannot charge top dollar for something that is abundant, so you must create artificial shortages.

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It won’t happen because you don’t understand hydrolics, up and down grades, momentum of liquids, and the sheer cost of a blowout prone system. The Califirnia aqueducts are open air, prone to evaporation, but with low overhead except for a couple of pump stations and they only run less than 400 miles.

BTW, I understand they killed the idea of increasing the height of Shasta dam by 10 feet. Democrats don’t want more water, they want less so they can charge more for it.

jdog said:

Shows how little you actually know about the situation. There is more water in the west than we could ever use, they simply find ways to keep us from getting it. There was a plan in the 1970's to build a pipeline from BC to Southern Ca. but the California Water Authority killed it. They then cut off supply from the Delta via the "smelt controversy".

Point is, there is no water shortage in this country, only corrupt governments and corporation who get rich exploiting resources for mass profit.

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lol

There are plenty of regional water shortages in the west. The means to get water from where it is to where it isn't, is expensive.

Critter7r said:

lol

There are plenty of regional water shortages in the west. The means to get water from where it is to where it isn't, is expensive.

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Horsecrap, there are several third world countries who have built national water grids. I guess the US cannot even pull off third world infrastructure projects nowadays.... Yes globalism has made us great...