Posted on 04/27/2026 12:41:58 PM PDT by BenLurkin
This winter, the Upper Colorado Basin saw some of the lowest snow totals in recorded history. As a result, federal officials made a decision to limit water releases from Lake Powell downstream in the coming months. Officials say that will result in substantial drops in Lake Mead's elevation.
"All we’re seeing are depletions,” Kyle Roerink, advocate with the Great Basin Water Network, said.
“We are dealing with changing snowpacks, changing runoff patterns, increasing evaporation rates, drier soils, and other natural phenomena that are depleting our bank accounts and our savings accounts," he said.
Water managers face an encroaching deadline for the river and are expected to make key decisions by October on how to divvy up the shrinking Colorado River going forward. Negotiations between the seven basin states take place behind closed doors, leaving much of the public in the dark about what cuts could be coming down the pike.
"The state of negotiations right now is another unprecedented consideration that we are grappling with here in the desert Southwest. We have never seen all the states at loggerheads as they are right now. We have seen other states go toe-to-toe over the years, but never anything quite like this, and it is weighing heavily over the managerial decision-making, such as this issue that we're talking about right now," Roerink said.
"We really don't know how things will work yet in 2027 and in 2028. But what we do know is that reservoir levels are going to be at their lowest levels ever. And so this is a dark cloud hanging over us, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it will be spitting out any water in the near future," he continued.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktnv.com ...
That Milton Friedman quote about government, sand and the desert needs to be expanded to cover government, water and rivers. One common denominator.....
The largest desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere is in San Diego. I think they are at the point in water surplus that they are selling water to Arizona.
I remember dry years along the San Juan River in Colorado-New Mexico area. 1977 was really bad! Everyone in Farmington NM was allowed so much water then the price per gallon would double.
1952 was such a dry year NOTHING GREW in NE. New Mexico. Starved us out of our dry land farm at Gladstone.
I’m sure Alabama will support Tennessee in that effort.
Michigan has your water. We are NOT sharing. We might, now, be officially out of a drought
Georgia got the locomotive back from Chattanooga; as soon as the border gets properly surveyed, they'll have access for a pumping station on the River and can divert all that Tennessee River water down to Atlanta.
Colorado sends 7 trillion gallons to California who sends it to the ocean to keep some fish alive. since so many Californians have moved to Colorado we should keep the water. :)
Not at all. The water situation in the West is dire. That does not mean it is from climate change. There is more demand and dwindling supply. There are water wars between states and between cities and agriculture. The shortage is not a hoax.
Actually it is. In Oregon we have been told the aquifer is at dangerous levels and then found it was 3X what they have been telling us.
The latest hoax is lowering reservoirs to empty levels to protect the fish.
then this idea comes up but goes nowhere. Pumping Mississippi River water west
With the idiots of Putz Polis et al in charge, please don’t give them any ideas
I did a GIS Analysis looking at sending water from Cairo OH to Denver then reversing Denver’s cross basin tunnels to move water from east to west vs the other way they’re configured now.
The summary is it is a 5600+ foot climb from the confluence of the MS and OH rivers to Denver. You would need a 75 foot diameter pressure tunnel or pipe to move the 10.5 million acre feet per year the Colorado River basin is short. The distance is 860 miles of total pipe distance. At 100% efficiency you need 62 billion kWh per year to pump water that lateral distance plus uphill 5600 feet. Pumps are 80-90% and friction in the pipe of that diameter would be very low given the laminar flows in the vast core cross section call it 5%. So 62 Twh plus 15% more.
71.4 TWh is a good estimate.
How many nukes is this you ask since you need 24/7/365 power as stopping and starting this mass of moving water is not easy or efficient.
Japan has built 1300MW ABWR in 39 months from first pour to first critical mass.
This is.significantly faster than a pipeline could be fabricated or dug.
You would need 8 ABWR to cover 71.4 terawatt hours per year using realistic capacity factors for Japanese ABWR
So yeah you could send water West, no one makes a pipe of this size and a tunnel would also take a custom TBM set-up the largest TBM is 57.8 feet wide. The answer of course is parallel actually buildable pipes 10 meters is about as large as you can make for fiberglass reinforced prefab pipes. This is larger in diameter than the Superheavy SpaceX booster by a full meter.
You would need 6 of those to to carry the equal volume of a single 75 foot pipe. The smaller cross sectional area would up the friction so add another nuke to cover that energy.
The final system that humans could build would be 6 ten meter wide pressure pipes rising 5600+ feet over a run of 860 miles being pumped by nine dedicated 1300MW ABWR power plants. At $3800/kw installed what Japan built those for not the $10,000+ the US builds miles per KW for the power plants are 4.94 billion dollars each and you need 9 of them so 46.5 billion in capex plus power lines to the pumps all along the route.
Assuming a 80 year life for the reactors the capex over the volume the system could move is $53 per acre foot. This is the present value of the initial capex, of course capital recovery, and the NPV add considerably to this. Then you need to add in O&M costs plus the nuclear fuel costs as well. The easy button is just doing a PPA at a fixed $/MWh all in.
In the ERCOT market nukes sell MWh in the $35-50/MWh range wholesale.
You need 71.4 TWh annually actually more with 6 pipes vs one large one it’s 80 ish TWh call it 80. 80 TWh = 80,000,000 MWh at a negotiated PPA of $35/ MWh = 2.8 billion dollars in power costs annually. At full flow of 10.5 million acre feet per year that works out to $266 in power costs with a PPA price of $35/MWh.
There is 325,850 gallons per acre feet, this is 0.08183335 cents per gallon delivered to Denver at least the power costs. Residential is in 1000 gallon units so 81.83 cents per 1000 gallons.
The biggest expense is the massive pipes cost estimates are going to be 100 million per mile easy. 86 billion is going to be on the low side.
50 year pipeline lifespan...
10.5 million acre feet per year over 50 years is 525 million acre feet this when amortized over 50 years from the original 86 billion is $163/AF again capital recovery is going to inflate that big time 5% per year with government bonds prob as good as one could hope for.
So $163 + $266 + capital recovery + O&M + capex(pumps+intakes,outfalls ect)
I came up with $1000-1200 per acre foot depending on the capital recovery rates, and pumps costs using Chinese multiple tens of megawatt sized pumps.
$1200/AF = $3.68 per thousand gallons that’s much to high for agriculture use but residential yeah it’s in a reasonable price range.
For comparison
North Collin SUD (2025/2026): $6.03 per 1,000 (0-2,000 gal), $7.24 (2,001-8,000), $8.69 (8,001-15,000), $10.42 (15,000+).
Basically you could send water to Denver or any other city but it would be too expense for farm use it to fill Lake Mead or Powell with. The evaporation losses alone would make it much more expensive the further you get from the Denver tunnel outfalls.
Desalination is much cheaper.
Israel has it down to 47 cents per cubic meter that’s $1.50/1000 gallons
That s $488.77 per acre foot plenty cheap for residential , commercial and industrial use.
Some high value crops like herbs, lettuce, strawberries can make economics work at that levels the.Israelis do it.
You however cannot flood irrigate alfalfa hay with 5 feet per square foot in the desert at this price.
News flash you shouldn’t be growing a crop that needs FIVE ACRE FEET per acre per season in the bloody desert to feed cows with.
Desal.works because every acre foot California desals they should be forced to give up from taking from the Colorado River basin. This leaves more water upstream that can be held back and used up stream.
It’s much easier to not let water flow downhill tonne taken out of the basin than it is to pump water uphill because of some silly 1920 compact that should have been voided decades ago.
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