Thoughts on western states building a pipeline to take water from the Mississippi river??
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-07-13/drought-water-pipleline"Why not begin a grand national infrastructure project of building a water pipeline from those flooded states to the Southwest?
Specifically, start with a line from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River at Lake Powell, where a seven-state compact divvies up the water. Moreover, we need water in our dams for hydroelectric power as well as for drinking and irrigation, so we would power the Hoover, Glen Canyon and Parker dams"
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The water wars are around the corner... and it could get very ugly..
= new reply since forum marked as read
From the LTTE: "'The main pipeline would span about 1,000 miles from Jackson, Miss., along the southern borders of Colorado and Utah to Lake Powell, at an elevation of about 3,700 feet."
Yeah, that's why I said there would be a better route than the one specified in the LTTE. But even that would likely require lifting the water more than a mile. I was thinking of roughly the route of I-40, but you mentioned Benson and I-10. Benson, as you said, is a few hundred feet short of one mile higher than Jackson, but that route (a) would take you several hundred miles out of the way, resulting in that much longer of a pipeline and (b) still probably wouldn't be the highest point on the pipeline, since I think you've still got mountains and/or or the grand canyon to cross between Benson and the Glen Canyon Dam. (You could reach Lake Mead that way, though.)
I mean, the letter had the detail of the Colorado border, like I said. But I get your point about the larger point being the larger point. Even so, making that point doesn't make this a feasible solution.
On that I will happily agree!
Whiskey is for drinking, water is for FIGHTING.
and here is the conclusion:
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The Colorado Compact establishes how much water from the Colorado River System is promised to seven states across the Southwest, the greediest state being California who is guaranteed 4.4 million acre feet (approx. 1,400,000,000,000 gallons) of the total 15 million acre feet. The law governing these water rights is called prior-appropriation, which says the first person to take water for industrial, agricultural, or household use gets to continue using that amount of water. In other words, the early bird gets the worm—and in this case one of the early birds was California, as its population boomed early on.
As the agreement was forming there were a few hiccups. There are 22 Native American tribes that live in the region and were not accounted for. Mexico, being towards the end of the river, wanted less water taken out, not only for its people to use, but also for water quality benefits. So, Mexico was promised 1.5 million acre feet. California and Arizona had a conflict that was resolved by Arizona agreeing to give California it’s water before any other state and California agreeing to vote for federal funding of the Central Arizona Project (to build infrastructure like dams and diversions).
The final hiccup was not that there was no established policy on what to do with too much water. Instead, it soon became clear that there would be a larger issue with what to do when there is too little. One reason there has been less water than expected is that the year the Colorado Compact was established, 1922, was a year with high flow. Meaning that on an average year the water is over-promised and overdrawn. Another reason for low water years is the changing climatic conditions. During the drought between 2000 and 2005, the reservoirs were more than half empty. There was an obvious need for additional policy.
https://cwseducation.ucdavis.edu/class/111/colorado-river-water-rights-past-present-and-yet-come
Check out the other articles on the right at the link above:
It was designed to screw over the 22 tribes.
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Lake Powell is currently down 164' from "Full Pool".
https://lakepowell.water-data.com/
That's an ENORMOUS amount of water. Lake Mead is suffering a similar plight.
As an example, I took this photo of Rainbow Bridge National Monument when I was house-boating on lake Powell in July of 1996. The lake was almost at full pool, but not quite (Literally within a few feet) and the floating boat dock was within sight of the arch. Now the dock is well over a mile hike back down the canyon.
Here is a shot taken in October the next year, clearly showing the "Bathtub Ring" and how much the water level had fallen in just 14 months. That boat against the canyon wall is a 60' sightseeing boat out of Wahweap Marina;
Imagine that same photo taken today, but that white colored rock now almost 170 feet above the boat.
This drought is unprecedented in the Colorado basin, and if snowfall levels returned to historic norms, it would take 30 years to refill both Powell and Mead to their historic average high water levels.
It needs to be an aqueduct on the order of the California Aqueduct.
And in spite of the poster above's vehement declaration that it won't happen (I responded to the same person back in early July on a similar thread), if there is enough money at stake, it sure as hell will happen.
It's astounding to me that so many so-called "Progressives" that live in the east seem to be more than happy to tell almost 80 million of their fellow Americans to just go fuck themselves when it comes to having fresh water to live on.
This thread prompted me to finally start giving money to the Alliance For The Great Lakes.
...keep your greasy parched hands off our water...
...you're the ones who wanted to live in a desert...
...so live there...
