Posted on 07/01/2022 6:22:47 AM PDT by libh8er
Citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi south of the Old River Control Structure don’t need all that water. All it does is cause flooding and massive tax expenditures to repair and strengthen dikes.
The best solution would be for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to build an aqueduct from the Old River Control Structure on the Mississippi to Lake Powell, fill it, and then send more water from there down the Colorado to fill lake Mead.
About 4.5 million/gals a second flow past that structure on the Mississippi. As mentioned, New Orleans has a problem with that much water anyway, so let’s divert 250,000 gallons/sec to Lake Powell, which currently has a shortage of 5.5 trillion gallons.
This would take 254 days to fill.
Lake Mead has a somewhat larger shortage, about 8 trillion gallons, but it could be filled in about 370 days at 250,000 gallons/sec.
Within a year and eight months of the aqueduct’s finish, both reservoirs would be filled and most of the Southwest’s water problems would be gone. We built a California aqueduct that saved Southern California and a crude oil pipeline across Alaska that were far more difficult than this proposal.
Yep, it’s a long way, 1,523 miles from New Orleans to Phoenix. Of course, a straight line from New Orleans to Page is about 1,350 miles, too.
Understood. But even with their nutcase restrictions for real needs, California and its climate and mismanaged system simply cannot handle the excessive needs of 40 million plus residents in a region that could never survive on its own without raping the best parts of its states (and other states) of water.
They need to be building dozens of nuclear-powered desalinization plants, frankly.
A gallon of water weighs 8 lbs. To get the water through the Rockies you would have to raise it in places up to 8000 ft. So calculate the energy it would take to raise millions of cubic feet of water up that hill.
A quicker way would be to fill Death Valley with sea water and let it evaporate in the desert heat.
It may be cheaper than you think.
Ending in Farmington and use San Juan river would save at least 200miles. water does need to follow straight line so aqueduct can take advantages of land profiles.
Channels like that are crossing US all over the place.
Since water is the only official non-hazardous material in the world, the lawsuits could be limited! No problem with those scary leaks!
Finally, some of the water on the way could be dropped into Rio Grande and Pecos Rivers to help NM and Texas.
Everybody on its way would be happy!
But unfortunately, US lost its energy!
The interstate freeway system is the project many times larger than this one, yet it was done. But now, it could NOT be done.
We used to do project like this, we had visions!
Now, we tight ourselves in knots by the lawsuits so we cannot do anything!
Bunch of our money go to keep alive some people who refuse to contribute!
Infrastructure investments deteriorated into redoing street corners four, five times, to make them every time even more AWD accessible.
US lost its spirit! That’s the biggest problem!
Or we could just let the environMENTAL whackos die of thirst.
Evidently someone thought John Bunyan's Vanity Fair was a blueprint, not a caution.
There are theree. The Mohave, the Sonaran and the Chijijuan.
The real problem is not climate change but rather climate normalizing.
Another problem is fooolish people believing realestate sales man.
They keep moving the goalposts..................
“Citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi south of the Old River Control Structure don’t need all that water.”
Yeah? Sez who?
CA, you shoulda built those desalination plants you nixed instead of worrying about little fishes. So suck on it and stay in the Hell you created.
And keep your BS west of the Mississippi River.
I get 20.6 GW required to get 250,000 gal of water per second up the 7,300 ft elevation of the continental divide. Of course you could recover a chunk of that energy, maybe 7 Gw or so, with hydro plants on the downslope end of the pipeline, so it’s not a total loss.
No, not simple, but doable!
Huge benefits. Something we can concentrate on - like the Interstate system! That was not simple either!
Definitely more useful than the fast railroads CA spends billions on.
We have just shut down the Navajo power station which could provide like 20% of the power needed.
Like I mentioned, CAP pumps water uphill like 2,200 ft. All the time. This would be like CAP X 5 project. Again, not a problem for America fifty years ago!
Unfortunately we are going downhill!
What could be done during pres. Eisenhower, cannot be done during Resident Biden!
#117 I saw a farmer video of a guy in northern california who could not plant on some of his land due to some “endangered’ lizard. He and his grandfather and father before him never saw said lizard but a state biologist came by and found one, just one and declared the land not available. They have not seen any since and never did see the one the biologist said they saw. He said it would cost thousands for him to have a survey done.
15 million gallons per minute flow rate would require about 5 million horsepower to move that water at zero head pressure. 5 million horsepower would require an entire power plant to run just those pumps.
It is an amazing part of how much public education has declined, that such a statement is necessary.
The problem is, that it could, eventually , be extended beyond just diverting occasional excessive flood water (some flooding is necessary from time to time to maintain the already damaged estuary ecosystem that in turn supports fisheries in the Gulf. Insufficient flow increases the salinity of the water, killing some critical vegetation and altering the balance of fish species. Army Corps of Engineers projects upriver to channelize the formerly meandering river led to many of the problems we have today, such as erosion of agriculturally vital soils upriver and the subsequent dead zone it off the coast.) Once the water supply becomes reliable, California will then become accustomed to having more water than nature provides, and will demand more and more, even when the Mississippi isn’t flooding, and they will get it because They have more votes in Congress than Louisiana. They will waste the water trying to grow more non-native vegetation, and for their agriculture at the expense of Louisiana and Mississippi’s fisheries. California will hike their population with more and more illegal and legal immigrants, and get even more representation in Congress. On the other hand, the prospect of sending Midwestern and Southern sewage to Nancy Pelosi is kind of amusing.
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Hahaha As if the environazis will allow that.
Phoenix is well out of your way, and there are a lot of mountains in between Phoenix and Page. What’s the minimum elevation you have to cross? You’re right that the divide is only at 4800 ft on I-10.
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