1. Over the Rocky Mountains is cheaper?
2. Isn't more volume readily available for a longer period from Canadian sources than merely relying on the Mississippi's spring surge?
3. Would downstream Mississippi users object to lower flow, or (as I suspect) would the diversion volumes seem negligible to them?
1. Over the Rocky Mountains is cheaper?
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Cheaper than piping the water down from Canada. The distance is shorter. There is a slow flat uplift of the high plains to the south pass of western wyoming —which is a low gradually sloping up and down spot in the rockies that frontier people took traveling west in the first half of the 19th century. Once the water gets to south pass —gravity would take it all the way to the gulf of california. For that matter you could put a hundred miles of generators in the downhill slope of the pipeline and generate most of the electricity to pump the water uphill. If not, there are natural gas fields and coal fields all over the place to provide power for pumps.
2. Isn’t more volume readily available for a longer period from Canadian sources than merely relying on the Mississippi’s spring surge?
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This is true but it doesn’t solve the problem of Mississippi flooding which every year costs several billion dollars in army core of engineer and FEMA costs. The perfect solution is to kill two birds with one stone. The perfect solution is to solve the flooding problem and solve the drought problem with the same project. This is actually what Hoover dam in colorado accomplished. It was originally designed to solve the problem of flooding in the lower colorado and only later did it fit into the role of providing power and energy.
3. Would downstream Mississippi users object to lower flow, or (as I suspect) would the diversion volumes seem negligible to them?
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We’re only talking about taking water out of the Mississippi during the flood season from March to June. The people along the Mississipi are not going to complain about not being flooded out.
Taking even 10 feet of water off the top of the Mississippi is still an enormous task. That is one gigantic river. That said, there’s also a gigantic number of places out west that could use the extra water.
Now if you want to argue that the quality of the water up north is better—I would agree.
I was in Ketchikan Alaska last Friday 7/11. That town has the highest rainfall in the USA and delicious water.
I imagined catching rain that filtered through the spruce forests there, bottling it and selling it into San Francisco markets for $5.00@ bottle.
Same would work across the border in Canada. Hundreds of miles to the south—I was chewing on bright green spruce sprigs as I walked around Victoria the next day. Tasty stuff. I was traveling fast.
Today I bought some distilled water Norway. The tap water here in northern Virginia smells of chlorine. I put it through a brita filter and the chlorine smell goes away but the water still tastes harsh. I bought some water from Norway in the store today for $5. It has the same clear clean taste as I recall from Ketchikan.