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 . Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Unrecognizable. Lake Mead, a lifeline for water in Los Angeles and the West, tips toward crisis. The distance between Albuquerque, for example, and the Mississippi River perhaps the closest hypothetical starting point for such a pipeline is about 1,000 miles, crossing at least three. This would take 254 days to fill.. The idea is as old and dusty as the desert Southwest: Pipe abundant Great Lakes water to parched cities out West, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. YouTube. Dothey pay extra for using our water? 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. It boggles the mind. In 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interiors Bureau of Reclamation completed the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken within the Colorado River Basin at the time, which analyzed solutions to water supply issues including importing water from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. 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. Among its provisions, the law granted the states water infrastructure finance authority to investigate the feasibility of potential out-of-state water import agreements. California Gov. Instagram, Follow us on While the much-needed water has improved conditions in the parched West, experts warn against claiming victory. Vessels ran aground and had to navigate very carefully. Developed in 1964 by engineer Ralph Parsons and his Pasadena-basedParsons Corporation,the plan would provide 75million acre-feet of water to arid areas inCanada, the United States and Mexico. Arizona needs water. But a Mississippi pipeline is a pipe dream It would turn the Southwest into an oasis, and the Great Basin into productive farmland. The idea of drinking even heavily treated liquid wastemay seem unpalatable, but Westfordthinks people will adapt. Precedents set by other diversion attempts, like those that created the Great Lakes Compact, also cast doubt over the political viability of any large-scale Mississippi River diversion attempt, said Chloe Wardropper, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor researching environmental governance. "I don't think that drought, especially in the era of climate change, is something we can engineer our way out of.". The conceptsfell into a few large categories: pipe Mississippi or Missouri River water to the eastern sideof the Rockies or to Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, bring icebergs in bags, on container ships or via trucks to Southern California, pump water from the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest to California via a subterranean pipeline on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, or replenish the headwaters of the Green River, the main stem of the Colorado River, with water from tributaries. The California water wars of the early twentieth century are summed up in a famous line from the 1974 film Chinatown: Either you bring the water to L.A., or you bring L.A. to the water. Nearly a hundred years have elapsed since the events the film dramatizes, but much of the West still approaches water the same way. Widespread interest in the plan eventually fizzled. Moreover, we need water in our dams for. and Renstrom says that unless Utah builds a long-promised pipeline to pump water 140 miles from Lake . But pipelines and other big ideaswill always attract interest, hydrology experts said, because they falsely promise an innovative, easy way out. 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. In it, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Idaho Attorney General Ral Labrador contend that a new interpretation of a Clean Water Act rule is too vague, oversteps the bounds of federal authority and puts the liberties of states and private property owners at risk. What's the solution to West's water crisis? Desperate ideas explained The actual costs to build such a pipeline today would likely be orders of magnitude higher, thanks to inflation and inevitable construction snags. Water is the new oil: Piping Lake Superior water West? Is California still in a drought? Recent storms fill many CA reservoirs Pipe water from the plentiful Great Lakes to deserted towns in the West like Phoenix and Las Vegas. Despite the recent defeat of a major plant in Huntington Beach, after the California Coastal Commission said it was too environmentally damaging, "ocean desalination can't be off the table," said Coffey. Last updated on: February 10, 2023, 10:54h. YouTube, Follow us on Yes. And biologists andenvironmental attorneys saidNew Orleans and the Louisiana coast, along with the interior swamplands, need every drop of muddy Mississippi water. Today, any water pipeline could cost from $10 billion to $20 billion with another $30 billion in improvements just to get the water to thirsty people and farms. "Yes, a Superior-Green River pipeline seems unrealistic, even impossible at first glance," Huttner wrote for Minnesota Public Radio. Pipeline debate at center of California carbon capture plans Instagram, Follow us on Great Lakes water piped to Southwest 'our future,' says NASA scientist Filling Lake Mead with Mississippi River Water No Longer a Pipe Dream. Nonetheless, Siefkes trans-basin pipeline proposal went viral, receiving nearly half a million views. 2023 www.desertsun.com. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson), Lawmakers targeting hospital facility fees, Whats Working: How a Denver nonprofit is expanding the benefits of work. The project would require more than 300 new dams,canals, pipelines, tunnels, and pumping stations, bans large waterexportsoutside of the area. Moving water from the Mississippi River to west would require massive On Tuesday, the Scottsdale City Council agreed on a proposal to treat water and deliver it to the community for three years. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); A nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Has no one noticed how much hotter the desert is getting, not to mention the increase in fires in our area. He said the most pragmatic approach would only pump Midwest water to the metro Denver area, to substitute forimports to the Front Range on the east side of the Rockies, avoiding "staggering" costs to pump water over the Continental Divide. Buying land to secure water rights would also cost a chunk of cash, which leads to an even larger obstacle for such proposals: the legal and political hoops. 1999-2023 Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. But water expertssaid it would likely take at least 30 years to clear legal hurdles to such a plan. Similar ideas have been suggested about Great Lakes water. The . 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. Petition End Floods in America by Creating a Pipeline Network to Million told Grist that hes secured partial funding for the project from multiple banks and the infrastructure company MasTec, but it remains unclear how much he would have to charge to make the project profitable. Senior citizens dont go to wave parks. Proponents of these projects argue that they could stabilize western cities for decades to come, connecting populations with unclaimed water rights. But interest spans deeper than that. Wildfire, flooding concerns after massive snowfall in Arizona, Customers will have to ask for water at Nevada restaurants if bill passes, Snow causes semi truck to crash into Arizona DPS Trooper SUV near Williams, A showdown over Colorado River water is setting the stage for a high-stakes legal battle, In Arizona and other western states, pressure to count water lost to evaporation, While the much-needed water has improved conditions in the parched West, Arizona state legislature passed a measure in 2021, RELATED: Phoenix city officials celebrate final pipe installation in the Drought Pipeline Project, the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken within the Colorado River Basin. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, prodded by members of Congressfrom western states, studied the massive proposal. Ive cowboyed enough in my life to know that you just got to stick to the trail, he said. In any case, Utah rejected a permit for the project in 2020, saying it would jeopardize the states own water rights. A recent edition of The Desert Sun had twoletters objectingto piping water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River, and on to California. Twitter, Follow us on Paffrath proposed building a pipeline from the Mississippi River to bring water to drought-stricken California. It dawned on Million that Colorado had unclaimed rights to water from the Green, since the river was part of the Colorado River system, and he devised a plan to build a pipeline that would pump water around the Rockies to the city of Fort Collins, where he lives. But Denver officials have expressed skepticism,because Missouri or Mississippi water isof inferior quality to pure mountain water. To be talking about pipe dreams when thats not even feasible for decades, if at all Its a disservice, Scanlan said. But moving water from one drought-impacted area to another is not a solution.. USGS Surface Water for USA: Streamflow Measurements But if areas like the Coachella Valley continue to approve surf waveparks and "beachfront" developments in the desert, "we're screwed," he said bluntly. Diverting that water also means spreading problems, like pollutants, excessive nutrients, and invasive species. Follow us on People fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta's Elk Slough near Courtland, California, on Tuesday, March 24, 2020. About 33% of vegetables and 66% of fruits and nuts are produced in California for consumption for the nation. These canals and pipelines are . The pipeline would provide the Colorado River basin with 600,000 acre-feet of water annually, which could serve roughly a million single-family homes. "The engineering is feasible. Asked what might be the requirements and constraints of a pipeline from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Gene Pawliksaid, Since (the Army Corps) has not done a formal study related to the use of pipelines to move water between watersheds, we cannot speculate on the details or cost of such projects.. The water, more than 44 million gallons a day, would come from 115 wells drilled between 1,000 and 5,000 feet deep in Beryl-Enterprise, a basin where the state has restricted use of shallow groundwater due to over-extraction. Above, the droughts effects can be seen at a marina on June 29. Well, kind of, Letters to the Editor: Shasta County dumps Dominion voting machines at its own peril, Editorial: Bay Area making climate change history by phasing out sales of gas furnaces and water heaters, Column: Mike Lindell is helping a California county dump voting machines. Heproposed usingnuclear explosionsto excavate the system's trenches and underground water storage reservoirs. 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. The Arizona Legislature wants the federal government to study the feasibility of constructing a pipeline . Too wacky? Moving water from flood to drought - Phys.org People need to focus on their realistic solutions.. Every year, NAWAPA would deliver 158 million acre-feet of water to the US, Canada, and Mexico more than 10 times the annual flow of the Colorado River. Email: newsroom@coloradosun.com Even if the sticker price werent so prohibitive, there are other obstacles. The trooper inside suffered minor injuries. 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. Million sued, and he says he expects a ruling this year. Diverting that water also means spreading problems, like pollutants,. Pumping Mississippi River water west: solution or dream? Scientists estimate a football field's worth of Louisiana coast is lost every 60 to 90 minutes. "This sounds outlandish, but we have a massive problem," Paffrath said. Studies and modern-day engineering have proven that such projects are possible but would require decades of construction and billions of dollars. Telling stories that matter in a dynamic, evolving state. Is this a goo. Idaho joins Texas lawsuit against Biden administration over federal Who is Kevin Paffrath? Democrat recall candidate calls for a pipeline "To my mind, the overriding fatal flaw for large import schemes is the time required to become operational. [1] It might be in the trillions, but it probably does exist.. Yet their persistence in the public sphere illustrates the growing desperation of Western states to dig themselves out of droughts. Opinion: How has American healthcare gone so wrong? Pipelines usually consist of sections of pipe made of . What states in the Southwest have failed to do is curtail growth and agriculture that is, of course, water-driven. In the 20 years since he first had the idea, Million has suffered a string of regulatory and legal defeats at the hands of state and federal agencies, becoming a kind of bogeyman for conservationists in the process. The Colorado River is drying up. It's the lowest level since the lake was filled in the. To be talking about pipe dreams, when thats not even feasible for decades, if at all Its a disservice, Scanlan said. A Mississippi pipeline to Lake Powell would need to cut across four states, he and Johnson said, including hundreds of miles of wetlands in Louisiana and west Texas. Mississippi River drought will impact your grocery bill. The river's web, if some have their way, could become even larger. The Abandoned Plan That Could Have Saved America From Drought 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. 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. 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. Most recently, in 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation produced a report laying out a potentially grim future for the Colorado River, and had experts evaluate 14 big ideas commonly touted as potential solutions. 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. The idea of diverting water from the Mississippi to the Colorado River basin is an excellent one, albeit also fantastically expensive. Certainly not the surrounding communities. Pitt, who was a technical adviser on Reclamation's2012 report,decried ceaselesspipeline proposals. Page Contact Information: Missouri Water Data Support Team Page Last Modified: 2023-03-04 08:46:14 EST 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. Pumping Mississippi River water west: solution or pipe dream? Pipeline sizes vary from the 2-inch- (5-centimetre-) diameter lines used in oil-well gathering systems to lines 30 feet (9 metres) across in high-volume water and sewage networks. 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. Even if the government could clear these hurdles, the odds that Midwestern states would just let their water go are slim. In northwestern Iowa, a river has repeatedly been pumped dry by a rural water utility that sells at least a quarter of the water outside the state. An acre-foot is enough water to serve about two households for a year, so it could supply water to 150 million customers. Anyone who thinks we can drain the aquifer and survive is grossly misinformed. 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. It would carry about 50,000 acre-feet of water per year, much less than the original pipeline plan but still twice Fort Collins current annual usage. But it's doable. 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. The Western U.S. is experiencing its driest period in more than a thousand years, according to scientists from UCLA and Columbia University. But the idea hasnever completely died. The drought is so critical that this recent rainfall is a little like finding a $20 bill when youve lost your job and youre being evicted from your house, said Rhett Larson, an Arizona State University professor of water law. Your support keeps our unbiased, nonprofit news free. 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. A multi-state compact already prohibits any sale of water from the Great Lakes unless all bordering states agree to it, and its almost certain that Mississippi River states would pass laws restricting water diversions, or file lawsuits against western states, if the project went forward. Other forms of augmentation, like desalination, are also gaining popularity on the national scene as possible options. 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. Their technical report, which hasnt been peer-reviewed. 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 . 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. Physically, some could be achieved. The memorial is seeking Mississippi River water as a solution to ongoing shortages on the Colorado River as water levels reach historic lows in the two largest reservoirs on the river, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Politics are an even bigger obstacle to making multi-state pipelines a reality. Pipeline from the Mississippi River to Colorado? - Coyote Gulch Would itbe expensive? How can we bring water from Mississippi river to west, Arizona - Quora It might be in the trillions, but it probably does exist.. 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. Makes me wonder how this got this far, whose interests are being served and who's benefiting. In 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interiors Bureau of Reclamation completed the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken within the Colorado River Basin at the time, which analyzed solutions to water supply issues including importing water from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. "I'm an optimist," said Coffey, who said local conservation is key. Trans-national pipelines would also impact ecological resources. China, unlike the US, is unencumbered by NEPA, water rights and democratic processes in general. A water pipeline from the Mississippi River to the west? - Los Angeles Doug Ducey signed legislation this past July that invested $1.2 billion to fund projects that conserve water and bring more into the state. The driver of the truck was not injured. and Renstrom says that unless Utah builds a long-promised pipeline to pump water 140 miles from Lake . To Larsons knowledge, an in-depth feasibility study specifically on pumping Mississippi River water to the West hasnt been conducted yet. Guess Who Proposed the Missouri River Pipeline in the Federal Most notably, the Mississippi River basin doesnt always have enough water to spare. 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. Could a water pipeline from the Mississippi River to Arizona be a real Mississippi River to Colorado River Solar Powered Pipeline - Halfbakery The Associated Press Climate team contributed images and page design. Then take it out of the southern tip of the aquifer in Southern Colorado. 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. Pipeline | Definition, History, Types, Uses, & Facts | Britannica Power from its hydroelectric dams would boost U.S. electricity supplies. The water will drain into the headwaters of the Colorado river. Facebook, Follow us on Pumping Mississippi River water west: solution or pipe dream? Ultimately the rising environmental movement squelched it the project woulddestroyvast wildlife habitats in Canada and the American West,submergewild rivers in Idaho and Montana,and requirethe relocation of hundreds of thousands of people.

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