Posted on 04/13/2024 5:53:37 AM PDT by Libloather
Wrong! Lake Baikal in Russia has more water than all the great lakes combined. What else in the article is wrong?
1) Establish the arbitrary lake level considered ideal.
2) Build spillways connected to a massive piping system.
3) Irrigate the dry parts of the US while preventing flooding around the lakes.
I almost commented earlier today but since you pinged me I will. Yes lots of steel slag. Even down deep under our vegetable garden. 111th and Avenue M on the East Side is where I grew up. Most everyone in the neighborhood worked in the mills. Dad always fished in Lake Calumet from shore. A few times we had so much rain all the sewers backed up and we had water in the basement.
Pathetic fear porn.
I remembered you saying that! When I lived in Chicago I had a friend who drove from Ravenswood down to USS in I think Sauganash? to work.
(Somewhere in the Cal-Sag canal area anyway!)
Dad worked at Republic Steel for 37 1/2 years.
“In 1900 to promote canal traffic, the Illinois River /Calumet was reversed. A rise in lake levels could simply drain more water to the Mississippi.”
Not automatically. Due to a treaty with Canada there is a limit to the amount of water that can leave the Great Lakes basin per year. There are locks at the Great Lakes end and also flood gates to control the flow of water down gradient to the Mississippi River system. Right now about 3 million acrefeet per year flows out and down to the MS River system. To keep the current in the canal slow enough for barge traffic the upper limit would be 10 million AF if you deepened and widened the canal maybe 15 million per year. Both would take a redo of the international treaty and that needs Senate approval too. 10 million acrefeet per year would solve the water crisis in the southwest forever if you put a take point just south of the confluence of the Mississippi River and Ohio River system it’s 860 ish miles and 5400 feet up gradient to Denver across the bread basket of the world. Pumps every 100 miles with pumping basins as local distribution points would also solve the Ogallala aquifer deletion crisis as well. You could water a 100 mile wide swath on either side of those basins. Two ten meter wide pipes would carry 10 million acrefeet per year at reasonable flow rates. The energy needed would be 6 nuclear reactors worth 24/7. Denver has tunnels from 5600 feet directly through and under the continental divide reverse the flow in those since they take Colorado River water now and instead dump the imported water via this a pipes into the upper Colorado River basin. Gravity then takes it down hill to Lake Powell and then to Lake Mead no more pumps needed it’s all down hill from 5600 feet to sea level in Mexico. Total cost $400 billion and that includes the nukes. We have the technology it’s lack of will, but hey we can give $200 billion every six months to Ukraine so there is that.
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