Posted on 12/12/2012 4:21:46 PM PST by Uncle Chip
LAS VEGAS (AP) The federal government isn't going to tap the Missouri River to slake the thirst of a drought-parched Southwest, the government's top water official said Wednesday.
But rising demand and falling supply have water managers in the arid West considering a host of other options to deal with dire projections that the Colorado River the main water supply for a region larger than the country of France won't be able over the next 50 years to meet demands of a regional population now about 40 million and growing.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued what he termed "a call to action" with a three-year study of the river, its flows and its ability to meet the future needs of city-dwellers, Native Americans, businesses, ranchers and farmers in seven Western states.
"We are in a troubling trajectory in the Colorado River basin, as well as the Rio Grande basin," Salazar told reporters on a conference call outlining the math in the findings of the Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study.
Salazar, who oversees water managers and dam operators at the federal Bureau of Reclamation, dismissed as politically and technically impractical some ideas in the study, including piping water from the nation's heartland or towing Arctic icebergs south to help such thirsty U.S. cities as Denver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix. He said he wanted to focus instead on "solutions that are out there that will help us."
"There is no one solution that is going to meet the needs of this challenge," Salazar said. "We need to reduce our demand through conservation. We also need to augment supply with practical measures."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
allocate the water to the Indian tribes and cut off the supply to Tucson...
Obama practical measures...
Low flow toilets.
Mandatory low flow toilets.
Shower with a friend.
Shower with strangers.
Mandatory shower with strangers.
Sponge baths.
Mandatory sp well you see where it goes.
Those with enough water are not paying their fair share etc.
I tip my full glass of water (over) in your honor.
Water, the ‘blue gold’
resource wars coming
Does it end with city dwellers being taken by cattle car trains to their last shower?
Usually, then there is no water and the soap is made out
of stone.
Maybe he’ll fix it so we can drink all we want but have
to recycle our urine to the colorado river basin.
Who had the idea of towing ice bergs to those cities? Congressman Hank (Guam might tip over) Johnson?
They need to tap the swimming pools of all the homeowners from Palm Springs to Orange County. There’s got to be enough water there to slake the thirsts of Phoenicians for 10 years or more.
Salazar was 100% for illegal immigration as a Colorado politician. Now he wants to steal Colorado water so ‘his’ people in SoCal can have plenty.
Salazar bluntly dismissed proposals like the multi-billion dollar pipeline running some 670 miles from the Missouri River to Colorado. Tapping the Mississippi, Green, Bear, Snake, Yellowstone and Columbia rivers also made a list of options that Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Kip White said weren't currently getting serious consideration.
What they should do is quit allowing the Platte River (Nebraska) to flow into the Missouri River and instead drill some large boreholes along it and pump that water into the ground to replenish the Ogallala Aquifer.
Simple, just build a dam across the south end of the Grand Canyon and let it fill up! Problem solved!..........
No, probably ranchers, farmers and mines that own water rights that the government needs.
close the bellagio and every other casino on the strip
No, just turn the water off.
I ‘m just surprised this administration hasn’t decided
to tow icebergs down from the artic before they all
melt from globull warming.
“We need to reduce our demand through conservation”
Key sentence. They will use this to as yet another opportunity to make us live with less freedom and growth
Eliminating residential swimming pools is probably the smartest suggestion of all and certainly easily doable without spending any tax money. Why aren’t you in Washington?
Probably in the future and problems with who has precedence in water allocation. I believe that the root of the problem is in water allocations from before 1950 that used the prior 20 years average flow. Unfortunately studies have since estimated that they managed to use the wettest 30 year period in the last thousand.
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