No. Who is Kevin Paffrath? Democrat recall candidate calls for a pipeline "The desalinationplant Arizona has scoped out would be by far the largest ever in North America,"said Jennifer Pitt, National Audubon Society's Colorado River program director. And there are several approved diversions that draw water from the Great Lakes. Available data for this site Madison County, Illinois. To be talking about pipe dreams when thats not even feasible for decades, if at all Its a disservice, Scanlan said. Studies and modern-day engineering have proven that such projects are possible but would require decades of construction and billions of dollars. 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. 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. 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. Instagram, Follow us on These realities havent stopped the Wests would-be water barons from dreaming. But we need to know a lot more about it than we currently do.. The . Makes me wonder how this got this far, whose interests are being served and who's benefiting. Booming Utah metro wants to pipe in water from Lake Powell so it can To the editor: With the threat of brownouts and over-stressed power grids, dwindling water resources in California and the call to reduce consumption by 15%, I want to point out we are not all in this together. "I'm an optimist," said Coffey, who said local conservation is key. Take that, Lake Mead. By Brittney J. Miller, The Cedar Rapids Gazette. Every day, we hear about water conservation, restrictions. We are already in a severe drought. An earlier version of this story misidentified for which agency Jennifer Pitt was a technical adviser. Still, its physically possible. Mulroy was the keynote speaker at the convention, held at Mandalay Bay, in Las Vegas, which is one of several that comprises the Chamber of Commerce's . YouTube. This summer, as seven states and Mexico push to meet a Tuesday deadline to agree on plans to shore up the Colorado River and itsshrivelingreservoirs, retired engineer Don Siefkes of San Leandro, California,wrote a letter to The Desert Sun with what he said was asolution to the West's water woes: build an aqueduct from the Old River Control Structure to Lake Powell, 1,489 miles west, to refill the Colorado River system with Mississippi River water. In 1982,efforts were made to revive the plan by a Parsons company engineer, and the Lyndon Larouche movement supported itas recently as 2010. Meanwhile, a rookie Democrat running for governor in Californias recall election last year proposed declaring a state of emergency in order to build a similar project. Drought conditions plagued the region throughout 2022, for instance, prompting concerns over river navigation. In the meantime, researchers encourage more feasible and sustainable options, including better water conservation, water recycling, and less agricultural reliance. Mississippi River drought will impact your grocery bill. 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. The 2012 study didn't discount either option but. The trooper inside suffered minor injuries. To support our nonprofit environmental journalism, please consider disabling your ad-blocker to allow ads on Grist. 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. The actual costs to build such a pipeline today would likely be orders of magnitude higher, thanks to inflation and inevitable construction snags. Its possible that the situation gets so dire that there is an amount of money out there that could overcome all of these obstacles, Larson said. The concepts fell into a few large categories: pipe Mississippi or Missouri River water to the eastern side of the Rockies or to Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, bring icebergs in. We can move water, and weve proven our desire to do it. The other alternatives have political costs, and they have costs that are maybe more likely to be borne locally, including by farmers and other large water users, she said. Rescue the oceans from the pollution that flood waters pick up and dump into the ocean, creating dead zones. 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. All rights reserved. Even if the government could clear these hurdles, the odds that Midwestern states would just let their water go are slim. Opinion: California gave up on mandating COVID vaccines for schoolchildren. We've had relatively rich resources for so long,we've never really had to deal withthis before, andwe don't want to change.". But interest spans deeper than that. Diverting the Missouri River to the West: 'Can' Does Not - HuffPost Yahoo, Reddit and ceaseless headlines about a 22-year megadrought and killer flash floods, not to mention dead bodies showing up on Lake Meads newly exposed shoreline, have galvanized reader interest this summer. Yes, it would be hugely expensive. It's 2011 and the technology exists to build a series of water pipelines across the US, to channel flood water to holding tanks in other areas, and to supply water to drought stricken areas. . Pipeline debate at center of California carbon capture plans 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Nonetheless, Siefkes trans-basin pipeline proposal went viral, receiving nearly half a million views. 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. Most recently, the Arizona state legislature passed a measure in 2021 urging Congress to investigate pumping flood water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River to bolster its flow. Even at its cheapest, the project would cost about twice as much per acre-foot of water delivered than other solutions like water conservation and reuse. 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 . The river's web, if some have their way, could become even larger. Twitter, Follow us on Palm Springs newspaper readers' drought fix: Siphon Mississippi It is a minimum of 1,067 miles from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River if it could be built in a fairly straight line (St. Louis to Grand Junction, Colorado, based on the route of. The project would require more than 300 new dams,canals, pipelines, tunnels, and pumping stations, bans large waterexportsoutside of the area. Fort, the University of New Mexico professor, worries that the bigwigs who throw their energy behind large capital projects may be neglecting other, more practical options. 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. PROVISIONAL DATA SUBJECT TO REVISION. But water expertssaid it would likely take at least 30 years to clear legal hurdles to such a plan. "We do not expect to see (carbon capture and storage) happen at a large scale unless we are able to address that pipeline issue," said Rajinder Sahota, deputy executive officer for climate change . Much of the sediment it was carrying was dropped in the slow moving water of the Delta. The state also set aside funds in 2018 to study possible imports from the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers, but to date, the study hasnt been done, he said. A retired engineer suggested a rather outlandish-in-scope but logical-in-approach solution to the seemingly growing floods in the central U.S. and the water woes of the West Coast - build a nearly 1,500-mile aqueduct to connect the two. Under the analyzed scenario, water would be conveyed to Colorados Front Range and areas of New Mexico to help fulfill water needs. 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. Arizona, which holds "junior"rights to Colorado River water, meaning it has already been forced to make cuts and might be legally required to make far larger reductions, wants to build a bi-national desalination plant at the Sea of Cortez, which separates Baja California from the Mexican mainland. Similar ideas have been suggested about Great Lakes water. States have [historically] been very successful in getting the federal government to pay for wasteful, unsustainable, large water projects, said Denise Fort, a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico who has studied water infrastructure. Shipping Snow: Could Eastern Water Ease Western Drought? Just this past summer, the idea caused a firestorm of letters to the editor at a California newspaper. Famiglietti said as long as urban areas in the West don't persist in untrammeled growth, they have enough supply for the immediate future, with the ability to rip out lawns, capture stormwater runoff in local reservoirs, do municipal audits to fix leaks and other tools. The letter and others with an array of ideasgenerated hugeinterest from readers around the country and debate about whether the conceptsare technically feasible, politically possible orenvironmentally wise. Pipelines usually consist of sections of pipe made of . But, as water scarcity in the West gets more desperate, the hurdles could be overcome one day. I think the feasibility study is likely to tell us what we already know, he said, which is that there are a lot less expensive, less complicated options that we can be investing in right now, like reducing water use. This latest version would curve up through the Wyoming flatlands and back down to Fort Collins, a distance of around 340 miles. He frames the pipeline as a complement to water-saving policies. Drought conditions plagued the region throughout 2022, prompting concerns over river navigation. Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where its used for coastal restoration. (Unrecognizable. Lake Mead, a lifeline for water in Los Angeles and the West, tips toward crisis, July 11). Butbig water infrastructure projects aren't just of interest to the general public. A 45-mile, $16 billion tunnel that would mark California's largest water project in nearly 50 years took a step closer to reality this week, with Gov. But Westford and her colleague Brad Coffey, water resources manager,said desalination is needed in the Golden State. and planned for completion in 2050, it willdivert 44.8 billion cubic metersof water annually to major cities and agricultural and industrial centers in the parchednorth. Do they thank us for using our water? The Colorado Sun is a journalist-owned, award-winning news outlet based in Denver that strives to cover all of Colorado so that our state our community can better understand itself.
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