There is no need to get Mississipi River water to the west.
..............
I’m not talking about california here. I’m talking rather about Utah Nevada, Arizona.
The west, with its vast Pacific coastline has plenty of water; it’s in the Pacific Ocean, they just need to go get it instead of building “high speed trains” to no where.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
I absolutely agree on this. But they do have to get the price of desalination down. The Israelis are doing it for about $500@acre foot, sometimes a little less. The new posiden plant in southern california which is 20 years in the making and still not complete will cost over $1600@acre foot but likely will come in nearer to $2000@ acre foot. Those kinds of costs were too expensive for even Santa Barbara a decade ago but now they’re getting desperate so they’re talking about turning their $2000@ acre foot desal plant on.
There is no need to get Mississipi River water to the west.
..............
There is a need for flood control on the Mississipi River for a couple months of the year. And there is a dire need for water in Nevada and Arizona as Lake Meade and Lake Powell dry up.
I don’t know if you know your history of the Colorado river but the impetus for the dam there was originally because of a massive flood in the first decade of the 20th century that created the Salton Sea. Hoover Dam was originally designed for both flood control as well as water distribution and power generation.
You create synergies by meeting the needs of the Mississippi Delta people for flood control by sending water at flood stage to people in the South west who need water.
“There is a need for flood control on the Mississipi River for a couple months of the year. And there is a dire need for water in Nevada and Arizona as Lake Meade and Lake Powell dry up.”
No, again.
Increased Mississippi flood control should be based on a combination of more buy outs of those threatened most by Mississippi floods, where possible, converting the bought out land to public green space that can be allowed to flood, and in areas “above river” of very populous areas most susceptible to flooding, we can again use the power of eminent domain to buy and dig into land to create flood channels and, again, floodable public green space. The rest of any Mississippi flood control improvements should be in improvements of the traditional flood control infrastructure, NOT sending Mississippi water out west.
Again, for Arizona and Nevada the Guilf of California is close enough for efficient desalinization plants to serve them, and such plants will be a market for the increased domestic supplies of natural gas (which is what Israel uses) and if we contract with the Israelis we can get the U.S. domestic price of desalinization down as well.
THEN, there will LESS draw on the Colorado for its dwindling supply, which has dwindled because of lower precipitation rates on the western side of the Rockies.
And who ever told people living in deserts that everyone else had to work to give them water? And who ever told anyone that central California farming should be allowed to suck the land right out from under the valley (Not a mere current problem but a long standing problem, as the image in the link below shows. The measure on the pole shows where the land people stood on was in 1925, 1955, and 1977 - and it has continued dropping ever since). That is not a result of recent droughts, it is a result of human demands humongously greaster than natural supplies. Only west coast desalization on a large scale can help mitigate it, without needing or affecting anyone elses natural supplies.
Lastly, water rates need to go drastically up across the west, so that water efficiency there is improved by everyone’s need to get their own water costs down, and I admit that the “right” prices will also discourage some of the population growth in the southwest as well, until desalinization can get ramped up a lot. The price mechanism works much better then rationing or draconian local dictates about supply.
http://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/land-subsidence-monitoring-network.html