National water pipeline project

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

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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.

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We did something like that in Arizona about 40 years ago. The Central Arizona Project is a very long canal which diverts water from the Colorado river to metro Phoenix. Plus, we instituted all kinds of rules about water usage which has helped the stated during the last few droughts.

beefheart said:

We did something like that in Arizona about 40 years ago. The Central Arizona Project is a very long canal which diverts water from the Colorado river to metro Phoenix. Plus, we instituted all kinds of rules about water usage which has helped the stated during the last few droughts.

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Has it worked well or has it been of little benefit?

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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

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Ask Colorado if they think that it's a good idea. This was basically the premise behind allowing California access to their water supplies and now it's become huge problem.

I have been for a 'water pipeline' for a long time. If you live in a flood plain, start there and head west. Al least with water, if it leaks, who cares?

trouble13 said:

Has it worked well or has it been of little benefit?

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Worked very well. We don't have the problems that CA has.

Water is a precious resource when you live in a city that can get to 120 degrees in the summer.

I vacation often in a beachfront town in Mexico on the Sea of Cortez, it is a very dry and desolate place, they are planning to built a desalinization plant. Expensive stuff, but that pays off for them.

beefheart said:

Worked very well. We don't have the problems that CA has.

Water is a precious resource when you live in a city that can get to 120 degrees in the summer.

I vacation often in a beachfront town in Mexico on the Sea of Cortez, it is a very dry and desolate place, they have built a desalinization plant that has revitalized the city and allowed for growth. Expensive stuff, but that pays off for them.

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Desalination works fine for coastal states but not so much in the Midwest unless there was a way to transport it there, like say a pipeline.

In my mind the first step would be to do what your state has already done by connecting all the resiviors. The next step would be to start connecting to the surrounding states.

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trouble13 said:

Desalination works fine for coastal states but not so much in the Midwest unless there was a way to transport it there, like say a pipeline.

In my mind the first step would be to do what your state has already done by connecting all the resiviors. The next step would be to start connecting to the surrounding states.

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We need that water for AZ. California has drought issues because of the many decades long politics regarding water (watch the film "Chinatown"), they are finally changing laws and doing what is necessary. A massive pipeline is a good idea, but costly and difficult, lots to consider about placement (earthquakes, flooding, etc).

beefheart said:

We did something like that in Arizona about 40 years ago. The Central Arizona Project is a very long canal which diverts water from the Colorado river to metro Phoenix. Plus, we instituted all kinds of rules about water usage which has helped the stated during the last few droughts.

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And now there's not a drop of water in the Colorado River where it crosses the border into Mexico.
You know, I wouldn't camp overnight someplace where there was no fresh water, but since air conditioning was perfected...

Grand Mal said:

And now there's not a drop of water in the Colorado River where it crosses the border into Mexico.
You know, I wouldn't camp overnight someplace where there was no fresh water, but since air conditioning was perfected...

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They do periodic floods into the Sea of Cortez.

Also, I drive along the border between AZ and CA and Mexico through Yuma AZ, the river is flowing into Mexico.

I wouldn't camp somewhere that is a frozen wasteland, but since central heating was perfected.....

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.

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How does it feel to want?

Not gonna happen.

If California needs water, they need to build desalinization plants, instead of taking water from others.

Mircea said:

How does it feel to want?

Not gonna happen.

If California needs water, they need to build desalinization plants, instead of taking water from others.

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What kind of response is how does it feel to want? This is just a discussion, an intellectual excercise in exploring ideas to solve a problem. No need to be ignorant in your response.

If California needs water and Oregon has a surplus of it, what would be wrong with Oregon selling some to California instead of dumping it into a river, which is what they do to relieve pressure on damn when resiviors become too full.

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While I have nothing big and important to add, I'm just glad this isn't another russia thread

faithful_servant said:

Ask Colorado if they think that it's a good idea. This was basically the premise behind allowing California access to their water supplies and now it's become huge problem.

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Water rights are indeed a huge issue when either the source location or the usage location is lacking in water. For those of you who don't know, water rights are an entire segment of law that are litigated daily out west. Water rights are bought and sold, along with the subsequent lawsuits over who actually owned the water in the first place. There have been lawsuits regarding an individual's right to place a barrel and collect rainwater when they did not own the water rights associated with the property that they lived on.

I own property, yet I do not own any water rights associated with my land. Those rights belong to the local ditch company. If I were to set a pipe or dig a trench out of that ditch, the Sherriff would arrest me for theft. I have to buy my water from the water company, who buys water from the ditch company. Ditch companies actually patrol their ditches for this reason.

In fact, there are large tracts of historical farmland that exist unfarmed for the sole purpose of sending the water rights somewhere else.

From a geography standpoint, Colorado is divided in half and water goes two directions (look up continental divide). Far more water goes west than east. Water rights are so convoluted, that the State of Colorado itself is divided by water rights. The entire front range of Colorado does not have enough natural water to support its population (Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, et al) and has a pipeline and reservoir system that pumps water from the western slope of Colorado to the east side of the state (front range plus the farm land between Denver and Kansas). When in drought years, the western slope has to go on water restriction in order to provide enough water for the eastern side of the state even though absent human intervention the western slope would have enough water.

This is where California and Arizona come in (all downstream states for that matter) because they have an interstate compact requiring a certain amount of water be sent downstream from Colorado. In other words, people downstream get their water by bypassing the people where the water comes from because of legal agreements that are older than most of us, written by people now long dead, and so inflexible as to not account for natural changes in water availability. Of course water being affected by gravity happened naturally before humans ever got here, so is messing with nature the best course of action?

So, now that we have installed pipelines and diverted the water so that more people can live in southern California and the front range of Colorado, who legally gets the water rights?

(hint: I am not a lawyer, so I can't tell you. What I can tell you is farmer joe is selling his land and water rights to provide for his family. What now happens to the farmland without water? Man-made dust bowl a century in the making, anyone?)

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

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My brother lives in LA.

He said that the local word on the street is that the water that falls during the rainy season washing the shoreline mansions into the ocean could be held in a reservoir and answer most of the needs for the year in LA.

I don't know if this is true or not. What I do know is that the people who live in this irrigated desert allow that rain water to wash into the ocean.

It seems like using the local resources more wisely might be the first, best step to find a solution.

beefheart said:

We need that water for AZ. California has drought issues because of the many decades long politics regarding water (watch the film "Chinatown"), they are finally changing laws and doing what is necessary. A massive pipeline is a good idea, but costly and difficult, lots to consider about placement (earthquakes, flooding, etc).

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I suspect too many republicans advocating for tax cuts instead of upgrading infrastructure.

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

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Click to expand...

I have said the same thing but I think a pipeline from the Mississippi to the west makes more sense. All you have to do is get it to the San Juan River in NM, gravity takes over from there.

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

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We have our own well.
Don't care about the rest of the country's water.

Vadinho said:

I have said the same thing but I think a pipeline from the Mississippi to the west makes more sense. All you have to do is get it to the San Juan River in NM, gravity takes over from there.

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I picked Oregon randomly my thoughts were not really specific to them. I get your point though and to add to it I think it would make sense to start in places who have thd highest and lowest levels in an attempt to connect them first. Places that suffer water restrictions on their lawns is not as high of a priority in places that have water restrictions on crops

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SMTA said:

We have our own well.
Don't care about the rest of the country's water.

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Do you grow your own food and raise your own livestock too?

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trouble13 said:

Do you grow your own food and raise your own livestock too?

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Some food.
Neighbors have beef cattle. Black Angus.

Not only would it help drought areas but potentially it could also help flooded areas....Problem is you would have to name it the Clear oil national pipeline to get Conservatives to support it.

beefheart said:

They do periodic floods into the Sea of Cortez.

Also, I drive along the border between AZ and CA and Mexico through Yuma AZ, the river is flowing into Mexico.

I wouldn't camp somewhere that is a frozen wasteland, but since central heating was perfected.....

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You fail to mention how the USA has for years stolen Mexican water in its usual overbearing, exceedingly greedy manner.

"... the mighty Colorado River ... rarely reaches the sea".

Where the Colorado River Runs Dry - The New York Times

WarmPotato said:

While I have nothing big and important to add, I'm just glad this isn't another russia thread

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The fact that the globe shows California downhill from Oregon oversimplifies the problem. It’s energy intensive to pump over the mountains.

It’s an engineering challenge as well as a social one.

trouble13 said:

What kind of response is how does it feel to want? This is just a discussion, an intellectual excercise in exploring ideas to solve a problem. No need to be ignorant in your response.

If California needs water and Oregon has a surplus of it, what would be wrong with Oregon selling some to California instead of dumping it into a river, which is what they do to relieve pressure on damn when resiviors become too full.

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Oregon does not have a "surplus." The rivers support ecosystems, which you are apparently willing to destroy to feed your own greed. If California needs water, then it needs to ration water until it can build enough desalinization plants to meet current and future needs.