Each edition is filled with exclusive news, analysis and other behind-the-scenes information you wont find anywhere else. It would cost at least $1,700 per acre-feet of water, potentially yield 600,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2060 and take 30 years to construct. About 60 percent of the region remains in some form of drought, continuing a decades-long spiral into water scarcity. As politicians across the West confront the consequences of the climate-fueled Millennium Drought, many of them are heeding the words of Chinatown and trying to bring in outside water through massive capital projects. Arizona's legislature allocated$1 billion in its last session for water augmentation projectslikea possible desalination plant, and state officials are in discussions with Mexican officials about the idea, saidBuschatzke. The plan would divert water from the Missouri River which normally flows into the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico through an enormous pipeline slicing some 600 miles (970 . Could a water pipeline from the Mississippi River to Arizona be a real solution? Absolutely not," said Meena Westford, executive director of Colorado River resource policy for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. YouTube, Follow us on Yet some smaller-scale projects have become reality. Dothey pay extra for using our water? Letters to the Editor: Antigovernment ideology isnt working for snowed-in mountain towns, Letters to the Editor: Ignore Marjorie Taylor Greene? A drive up Interstate 5 shows how muchland has been fallowed due tolack of water. The idea of drinking even heavily treated liquid wastemay seem unpalatable, but Westfordthinks people will adapt. But interest spans deeper than that. The largest eastern river, the Mississippi, has about 30 times the average annual flow of the Colorado, and the Columbia has close to 10 times. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), FILE - Dredge Jadwin, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging vessel, powers south down the Mississippi River Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022, past Commerce, Mo. It might be in the trillions, but it probably does exist.. A recent edition of The Desert Sun had twoletters objectingto piping water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River, and on to California. Known as one of the greenest commercial buildings in the world, since it opened its doors on Earth Day in 2013 the Bullitt Center has been setting a new standard for sustainable design. While the much-needed water has improved conditions in the parched West, experts warn against claiming victory. Its largestdam would be 1,700 feet tall, more than twice the height of Hoover Dam. Under the analyzed scenario, water would be conveyed to Colorados Front Range and areas of New Mexico to help fulfill water needs. Tina Peters convicted of government obstruction charge, acquitted of obstructing a police officer, (720) 263-2338 Call, text, Signal or WhatsApp, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. "Sometimes there is a propensity in areas like Louisiana or the Southwest, where we've had such success in our engineering marvels, to engineer our way out of everything," Newman said. "Recently I have noticed several letters to the editor in your publication that promoted taking water from the Mississippi River or the Great Lakes and diverting it to California via pipeline or . The river's web, if some have their way, could become even larger. Senior citizens dont go to wave parks. Has no one noticed how much hotter the desert is getting, not to mention the increase in fires in our area. Their technical report, which hasnt been peer-reviewed, calculated that a pipe for moving this scale of water would need to be 88 feet in diameter around twice the length of a semi-trailer or a 100-foot-wide channel thats 61 feet deep. A water pipeline like Millions would help, if he could wave a magic wand and build it, but Fort believes the present scramble over the Colorado River will likely make such projects impossible to realize. Each state along the Colorado River basin had the rights to a certain quantity of river water, divided among major users like farms and cities, and the projects were designed to help the states realize those abstract rights. It boggles the mind. The project entails the construction of thousands of miles of pipelines and canals, 427 water treatment facilities, countless pumping facilities, and the displacement of 300,000 residents. But there are tons of things that can be done but arent ever done.. A man from Minnesota wrote to the Palm Springs Desert Sun earlier this month and expressed similar sentiments, warning, If California comes for Midwest water, we have plenty of dynamite.. My water, your water. Formal large-scale water importation proposals have existed in the United States since at least the 1960s, when an American company devised the North American Water and Power Alliance to redistribute Alaskan water across the continent using reservoirs and canals. A federal report from a decade ago pegged an optimistic cost estimate for a similar pipeline at $14 billion and said the project would take 30 years to build; a Colorado rancher who championed the idea around the same time, meanwhile, estimated its costs at $23 billion. Drought conditions plagued the region throughout 2022, prompting concerns over river navigation. Run a pipeline a few hundred miles to the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs CO which drains into Lake Powell and you are good to go. Its much easier to [propose] a shining pipeline from the Mississippi River that will never be built than it is to grapple with this really unpleasant truth.. Why not begin a grand national infrastructure project of building a water pipeline from those flooded states to the Southwest? Over the years, a proposed solution has come up again and again: large-scale river diversions, including pumping Mississippi River water to the parched west. Butbig water infrastructure projects aren't just of interest to the general public. Page Contact Information: Missouri Water Data Support Team Page Last Modified: 2023-03-04 08:46:14 EST . Los Angeles-area water districts have implemented much of what Famiglietti mentioned. Vessels ran aground and had to navigate very carefully. Donate today tohelp keep Grists site and newsletters free. The basic idea is to take water from the Mississippi River, pump it a thousand miles west, and dump it into the overtaxed Colorado River, which provides water for millions of Arizona residents but has reached historically low levels as its reservoirs dry up. The Southern Delivery System in the nearby Arkansas River Basin pipes water from Pueblo County more than 60 miles north to Colorado Springs, Fountain and Security. It would cost at least $1,700 per acre-feet of water, potentially yield 600,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2060 and take 30 years to construct. It would turn the Southwest into an oasis, and the Great Basin into productive farmland. This is the country that built the Hoover Dam, and where Los Angeles suburbs were created by taking water from Owens Lake. No. About 33% of vegetables and 66% of fruits and nuts are produced in California for consumption for the nation. Studies and modern-day engineering have proven that such projects are possible but require decades of construction and billions of dollars. Still, its physically possible. Las Vegas' grand proposal is to take water from the mighty Mississippi in a series of smaller pipeline-like exchanges among states just west of the Mississippi to refill the overused. And contrary to Siefkes' claims, experts said, the silty river flows provide sediment critical to shore up the rapidly disappearing Louisiana coast andbarrier islands chewed to bits by hurricanes and sea rise. All rights reserved. Under the analyzed scenario, water would be conveyed to Colorados Front Range and areas of New Mexico to help fulfill water needs. Nonetheless, Siefkes trans-basin pipeline proposal went viral, receiving nearly half a million views. In their technical report, which hasnt been peer-reviewed, they calculated that a pipe for moving this scale of water would need to be 88 feet in diameter around twice the length of a semi trailer or a 100-foot-wide channel thats 61 feet deep. States wish they wouldnt. Such major infrastructure is an absolute necessity, said Tom Buschatzke, director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources, who said he represents the governor on all things Colorado River.. Follow us on Arizonas main active management areas are in Maricopa, Pinal, Pima, and Santa Cruz counties, leaving much of rural Arizona water use unregulated. The most obvious problem with this proposal is its mind-boggling cost. Take that, Lake Mead. "To my mind, the overriding fatal flaw for large import schemes is the time required to become operational. Don't bother sending notices on conservation; they willbe ignored. While they didnt outright reject the concepts, the experts laid out multi-billion-dollar price tags, including ever-higher fuel and power costs to pump water up mountains or over other geographic obstacles. As zany as the ideas may sound, could anywork, and if so, what would be the costs? Twitter, Follow us on But moving water from one drought-impacted area to another is not a solution.. But water expertssaid it would likely take at least 30 years to clear legal hurdles to such a plan. For him, thatincludessetting aside at leastportions of the so-called "Law of the River," a complicated, century-old set of legal agreements that guarantees farmers in Southern California the largest share of water. Let's be really clear here. Just this past summer, the idea caused a firestorm of letters to the editor at a California newspaper. he said. 00:00 00:00 An unknown error. The Arizona state legislature allocated seed money toward a study of a thousand-mile pipeline that would do exactly this last year, and the states top water official says hes spoken to officials in Kansas about participating in the project. It is time to think outside the box of rain. Inspired by Mao Zedong, who in 1952 observed, "The south has plenty of water and the north lacks it, so if possible why not borrow some?" As a resident of Wisconsin, a state that borders the (Mississippi) river, let me say: This is never gonna happen, wrote Margaret Melville of Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Amid a major drought in the Western U.S., a proposed solution comes up repeatedly: large-scale river diversions, including pumping Mississippi River water to parched states. Similar ideas have been suggested about Great Lakes water. Much of the sediment it was carrying was dropped in the slow moving water of the Delta. USGS 05587500 Mississippi River at Alton, IL. Almost two decades ago, when Million was working on a masters thesis, he happened upon a map that showed the Green River making a brief detour into Colorado on its way through Utah. Kaufman is the general manager of Leavenworth Water, which serves 50,000 people in a town that welcomed Lewis and Clark in 1804 during the duo's westward exploration. The idea's been dismissed for as long as it's. Lake Mead is at its lowest level since it was filled 85 years ago. The water would be drained via a 36 inch pipe already installed four miles west of Sugarloaf Mountain outside Marquette. Water use has gone down 40% per capita in recent years, said Coffey. As western states grew over the twentieth century, the federal government helped them build several massive water diversion projects that would hydrate their growing urban populations: The Central Arizona Project aqueduct brought water from the Colorado River to Phoenix, for instance, and the Big Thompson system piped water across the Colorado Rockies to Denver. Martinez, an engineer who oversaw the construction of pipelines in the Sierra Nevada for Southern California Edison, agrees a 1,500-mile pipeline from the Mississippicould physically be built. I can't even imagine what it would all cost. This One thousand mile long pipeline could move water from the Eastern USA (Great Lakes, Ohio River, Missouri River, and Mississippi River) to the Colorado River via the Mississippi River. Local hurdles include endangered species protections, wetlands protections, drinking water supply considerations and interstate shipping protections. The only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice. To the editor: The states near the Gulf of Mexico are often flooded with too much water, while the Southwest is suffering a long-term drought. So what are the solutions to the arid West's dilemma, as climate change heats up and California's State Water Project, along with Lake Mead and Lake Powell, shrivels due to reduced snowmelt and rainfall? A pipeline taking water from the Missouri River west makes perfect sense, if you don't care about money, energy, or the environment. "We're going to start to see these reservoirs, which nine of them are already filled from the rain water, so then you add on snow melt and we may have some problems with that as far as flooding . An additional analysis emerged a decade later when Roger Viadero, an environmental scientist and engineer at Western Illinois University, and his graduate students assessed proposals suggested in last summers viral editorials. Newsom said the state must capture 100 million metric tons of carbon each year by 2045 about a quarter of what the state now emits annually. Viaderos team estimated that the sale of the water needed to fill the Colorado Rivers Lake Powell and Lake Mead the largest reservoirs in the country would cost more than $134 billion at a penny a gallon. Most notably, the Mississippi River basin doesn't always have enough water to spare. According to DPS, the driver of the semi-truck lost control of the truck on the icy I-40 freeway near Williams, striking a DPS patrol car parked by the side of the highway. Who is going to come to the desert and use it? Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where it's used for coastal restoration. "I think that societally, we want to be more flexible. The idea of diverting water from the Mississippi to the Colorado River basin is an excellent one, albeit also fantastically expensive. All three officials said the construction of a45-mile Delta Water Project tunnel to keep supply flowing from the middle of the state to thirsty cities in the south isvital. . document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This story is part of the Grist seriesParched, an in-depth look at how climate change-fueled drought is reshaping communities, economies, and ecosystems. Asked about a Mississippi River pipeline or other new infrastructure to rescue the Colorado River, federal and state officials declined to respondor said there was no realistic chance such a major infrastructure project is in the offing. At one point, activists who opposed the project erected three large billboards warning about the high cost and potential consequences, such as the possibility that drawing down the Green River could harm the rivers fish populations. Millions in the Southwest will literally be left in the dark and blistering heat when theres no longer enough water behind the dam to power the giant electricity-producing turbines. While the much-needed water has improved conditions in the parched West, experts warn against claiming victory. For as long as this idea has been proposed. Instagram, Follow us on 2023 www.desertsun.com. In southeastern California,officials at the Imperial Irrigation District, which is entitled toby far the largest share of Colorado River water, say any move to strip theirrights would result in legal challenges that could last years. Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where its used for coastal restoration. I find it interesting that households have to watch how much water theyare usingfor washing clothes, wateringlawns, washing cars,etc. The massive river, with tributaries from Montanato Ohio, is a national artery for shipping goodsout to sea. Fueled by Google and other search engines, more than 3.2 millionpeople have read the letters, an unprecedented number for the regional publication's opinion content. But grand ideas for guaranteeing water for the arid Westhave beenfloated for decades. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. Other legal constraints include the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Protection Act and variousstate environmental laws, said Brent Newman, senior policy director for the National Audubon Society's Delta state programs.
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