This is a neat idea. Moving flood waters to areas of drought. Via cleaned out existing pipe lines

[mitch96]

Romans moved water many miles back in 312 bc..
Here is the vid. Lots of background info in the beginning. The good stuff starts at 11:22
cost 13:23..
Ymmv, a thought..
m

[Srkdqltr]

1. Good luck with that.

[mitch96]

2. Any better ideas? nt

[rurallib]

3. we have been talking about this within our family recently

It seems so doable in a country that seems to love doing the so called impossible.

I haven't seen the video yet, but one problem we keep running into is simply cleaning out the debris - trees, building parts etc.

look forward to watching.

[mitch96]

5. It kinda sorta seems plausible. Romans did it way back when, Vietnam showed proof of concept.

Start small and add to it. Get somebody with megabucks like Bill Gates to throw a few million at it and see if it works.
m

[Bayard]

4. If oil pipelines can be run for hundreds of miles,

Moving water should be a breeze.

It could happen. Bring in the engineers!

[Jerry2144]

10. And if the water pipeline ruptured

It wouldn’t be as terrible of an environmental mess. Spilling gobs of water on the ground is much better than oil. It still could cause problems

[viva la]

6. But isn't this most seawater?

Won't they have to desalinate it? And if they can do that, why not just go to the vast Pacific?

As a midwesterner, I tremble to think what will happen when they remember the world's largest source of freshwater is right there on our northern border.

[rurallib]

11. As for the Great Lakes, except for Lake Michigan, Canada owns half of them

and will not let the US just take their water also. But you are right for worrying about that. It has been talked about for decades.
Another potential source would be the Mississippi River - imagine that?

I have always wondered how sea water comes down over land and somehow becomes fresh water. but it seems to.

[CousinIT]

7. Well. I've been hollering about that for years now.

Why it hasn't been done is beyond me -- except that a corpRAT or billionaire hasn't found a way to screw people and make a shitload of money from it yet. As soon as one does, it'll get done.

[moonshinegnomie]

8. not really feasible

for example.

lee county florida is 785 square miles or 518000 acres.
there are about 325000 gallons of water in an acre foot.
thats 168 Billion gallons of water to cover lee county to 1 foot deep


the alaska pipeline for example can transfer about 2 million barrels or 110 million gallons of oil per day
it would take 4 years to drain all that water just from 1 county

[mitch96]

12. In the vid they addressed this problem. Water is less viscus than oil and moves faster.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

9. It's uphill all the way, at least 1500 miles.

Just how much would it cost? And, as someone has already pointed out, isn't a lot of that excess actually seawater?

I don't think it's been thought through very carefully.

[mitch96]

13. Do the oil companies move oil up hill? I would "assume" it would cost less to move water than oil.nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

15. Is water selling for five dollars a gallon?

The economics of water and oil are vastly different.

[mitch96]

16. As stated in the vid, fixing the infrastructure after a flood is very expensive.

In the billions of dollars. I would assume the price to move water would be less than rebuilding infrastructure. I might be wrong but throw some numbers at me.
To me this is a moot point if you can't predict where the floods are going to be on a regular basis..Great to have a pipeline that has no water to move.
m

[taxi]

14. It took 7 years for the Colorado River to fill Lake Mead

With 7 pipelines as large as rivers it would still take a year, but with 84 of them you could get it done in a month. The forecasters need to up their game, no more of these last minute warnings.

[Srkdqltr]

17. I think... all of you guys who think it is such a good idea and easy peasy should get together,

Form a company and do it. Easy . It's wonderfully simple. Form the company, raise the money, get the permits, site surveys right-of-way and all the other things and go for it.

[mitch96]

18. Nobody said it would be easy but if you have a better plan let the drought and flooded people know.

[Srkdqltr]

19. Of course I don't have a better idea.

My point was , we can talk about pipes and all but none of us can do it. It's all a good idea until one has to do it than it falls apart

[mitch96]

20. As I said in post #3, get some person with megabucks to deal with the project would be my guess.

[msongs]

21. romans did all that using gravity nt

[mitch96]

22. Yup, great engineering for so long ago.. nt

[NickB79]

23. Anyone who believes this is feasible has no idea of scale or cost

Every oil pipeline in the US, repurposed to move water, wouldn't even be able to supply California's agricultural water demand. California uses 34 million acre feet per year of irrigation water. There are 326,000 gallons per ONE acre foot. The math is mind-boggling.

It would be substantially cheaper to build desalination plants on the West Coast than pump East Coast water 2000 miles over the Rockies. But the kicker is that even "cheaper" desalination water available today is too expensive for farmers, given the massive volumes they use. Piped water would be utterly unaffordable to any farmer west of the Rockies.

The truth is that agriculture as we know it in the US Southwest is largely doomed. Vast areas of farmland are now destined to become desert. It would be cheaper to build massive heated greenhouses in the Midwest than pipe water to the Southwest deserts.