[gunnut]

Um, isn’t the elevation of Lake Powell higher than the Mississippi? That is a lot of pumping for 250,000 gallons a minute.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

All you have to do is take the electricity that would have gone to charging EVs and use it to pump water. Of course, that’s electricity that won’t be available anyway, so it might as well go to not pumping water as well as not charging EVs.

[dennisw]

The elevation of Lake Powell is 3,652 feet..... The Mississippi cannot be too much above sea level. 100-200-300 ft? Depending on what part of the Mississippi River.

So pumping Mississippi water to Lake Powell would burn up lots of fossil fuels.

[econjack]

That is a lot of pumping for 250,000 gallons a minute.

Very true, but the idiot writing the article says it needs to be "250,000 gallons a minute second."

[Roccus]

There ya go again.
Clouding the issue with facts, common sense and logic!

[HartleyMBaldwin]

250,000 gallons per second, actually. The elevation of Lake Powell is currently about 3650’, and the elevation of the point near New Orleans can’t be much above sea level.

I’ll leave to the engineers an estimate of pumping costs to raise 13.5 trillion gallons of water more than 3600 feet and to push it through however many miles of pipeline.

[Michael.SF.]

Correction: A second, not a minute.

Your point though is correct either way though. But the idea is to fill it fast, which is not necessary, IMHO.

[verum ago]

Um, isn’t the elevation of Lake Powell higher than the Mississippi? That is a lot of pumping for 250,000 gallons a minute.

Lake Powell's full pool elevation is 3700' AMSL. The river elevation at the Old River Control Structure is listed as 24' AMSL. Heck, the Mississippi's source (Lake Itasca in Minnesota) is listed as being at 1475' AMSL. Insofar as I can tell, none of the MIssouri River branches / tributaries get anywhere near that elevation while still having enough flow that such a massive withdrawal wouldn't be devastating. Heck, the Mississippi River at its confluence with the Ohio (Cairo, IL) is still only at 730' AMSL.

Doing some quick back of the envelope calculations, in order to lift water at the rate listed in the article (which is 250k gallons per second, not per minute), I get a power expenditure of ~10.4 gigawatts. That assumes 100% efficiency (lol), and ignores the friction loss from 1157 miles of pipeline (great circle distance from ORCS to nearest part of Lake Mead), which would probably be in the GW range itself. (You'd definitely want to use a pipeline, or else your evaporation losses would be horrible given the climate of the lands said pipeline is crossing).

And, as other posters have pointed out, the Rocky Mountains are in the way- just spending a quick moment skimming the Santa Fe area (which aforementioned Great Circle route passes through) I can't find a route that crests at anything lower than the elevation of Santa Fe itself ~7200' AMSL. And you have to take this into account, as you can't just siphon water over the mountain range to the lower elevation of Lake Mead- since siphons work partly by atmospheric pressure, they stop working beyond the equivalent weight in a water column of the atmosphere- around 33 ft.

So to make this idea work, we're probably looking at an enormous steel pipeline well over a thousand miles long, through some very rugged country, and taking the Rocky Mountain Crest into account, requiring I would guess around 25-30 GW of power for pumping.

Simple, right?

*Sigh* but the proponents of these "Take Mississippi River water and send it to the West" projects never seem to get beyond the point of going 'Well, there's too much water over here, and not enough over here, and if I squint they're not that far apart on a map so we'll just dig a ditch. Problem solved!"