The . An earlier version of this story misidentified for which agency Jennifer Pitt was a technical adviser. Today, any water pipeline could cost from $10 billion to $20 billion with another $30 billion in improvements just to get the water to thirsty people and farms. The state is expected to lose 10% of its water over the next two decades, reports the . Scientists estimate a football field's worth of Louisiana coast is lost every 60 to 90 minutes. In 1964, a California engineering company proposed diverting flows from the Yukon and Mackenzie River watersheds, shared by Canada and the U.S., all the way to southern California and into Mexico. Infrastructure is one of the few ways well turn things around to assure that theres some supply.. Specifically, start with a line from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River at Lake Powell, where a seven-state compact divvies up the water. Do we have the political will? Million told Grist that hes secured partial funding for the project from multiple banks and the infrastructure company MasTec, but it remains unclear how much he would have to charge to make the project profitable. Kaufman is the general manager of Leavenworth Water, which serves 50,000 people in a town that welcomed Lewis and Clark in 1804 during the duo's westward exploration. Letter writers have asked why a water pipeline is not constructed from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River. of Engineers has turned back official requests for more water from the Missouri River to alleviate shortages on the Mississippi. The state also set aside funds in 2018 to study possible imports from the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers, but to date, the study hasnt been done, he said. It dawned on Million that Colorado had unclaimed rights to water from the Green, since the river was part of the Colorado River system, and he devised a plan to build a pipeline that would pump water around the Rockies to the city of Fort Collins, where he lives. A Mississippi pipeline to Lake Powell would need to cut across four states, he and Johnson said, including hundreds of miles of wetlands in Louisiana and west Texas. Take that, Lake Mead. No. Since about 1983, Lake Mead has dropped in volume from full capacity at. Available data for this site Madison County, Illinois. Parsons said theplanwould replenishthe upper Missouri and Mississippi Rivers during dry spells, increase hydropower along the Columbia Riverand stabilize the Great Lakes. A multi-state pipeline could easily require decades before it delivers a drop of water," said Michael Cohen, senior researcher with the Pacific Institute. Certainly not the surrounding communities. Instagram, Follow us on "To my mind, the overriding fatal flaw for large import schemes is the time required to become operational. But there are tons of things that can be done but arent ever done.. The ongoing drought in California has hit its fourth year. We are already in a severe drought. ", Westford of Southern California's Metropolitan Water District agreed. Its possible that the situation gets so dire that there is an amount of money out there that could overcome all of these obstacles, Larson said. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This story is part of the Grist seriesParched, an in-depth look at how climate change-fueled drought is reshaping communities, economies, and ecosystems. On the heels of Arizonas 2021 push for a pipeline feasibility study, former Arizona Gov. Most recently, the Arizona state legislature passed a measure in 2021 urging Congress to investigate pumping flood water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River to bolster its flow. It would turn the Southwest into an oasis, and the Great Basin into productive farmland. Run a pipeline a few hundred miles to the San Juan River in Pagosa Springs CO which drains into Lake Powell and you are good to go. "Arizona really, really wants oceanfront," she chuckled. Every day, we hear about water conservation, restrictions. The list of projects that run on similarly magical thinking goes on: Utah wants to build a pipeline of its own from Lake Powell to the fast-growing city of St. George, but Lake Powell has almost no water left. You should worry, Hidden, illegal casinos are booming in L.A., with organized crime reaping big profits, Look up: The 32 most spectacular ceilings in Los Angeles, Elliott: Kings use their heads over hearts in trading Jonathan Quick, This fabled orchid breeder loves to chat just not about Trader Joes orchids. "Nebraska wants to build a canal to pull water from the SouthPlatte River in Colorado, and downstream, Colorado wants to take water from the Missouri River and pull it back across Nebraska. The price tag for construction would add to this hefty bill, along with the costs of powering the equipment needed to pump the water over the Western Continental Divide. Releasing more water downstream would come at the expense of upstream users . Buying land to secure water rights would cost a chunk of cash, too, which leads to an even larger obstacle for such proposals: the legal and political hoops. In it, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Idaho Attorney General Ral Labrador contend that a new interpretation of a Clean Water Act rule is too vague, oversteps the bounds of federal authority and puts the liberties of states and private property owners at risk. But water expertssaid it would likely take at least 30 years to clear legal hurdles to such a plan. Additionally, building large infrastructure projects in general has become more difficult, in part thanks to reforms like the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that detailed environmental impact statements be produced and evaluated for large new infrastructure projects. Drainage area 171,500 square miles . Every year, NAWAPA would deliver 158 million acre-feet of water to the US, Canada, and Mexico more than 10 times the annual flow of the Colorado River. 2023 www.desertsun.com. He said hes open to one but doesnt think its necessary. By the way, none of this includes the incredible carbon footprints about to be stomped on the environment. A federal report from a decade ago pegged an optimistic cost estimate for a similar pipeline at $14 billion and said the project would take 30 years to build; a Colorado rancher who championed the idea around the same time, meanwhile, estimated its costs at $23 billion. The project would require more than 300 new dams,canals, pipelines, tunnels, and pumping stations. What states in the Southwest have failed to do is curtail growth and agriculture that is, of course, water-driven. Million himself, though, is confident that his pipeline will get built, and that it will ensure Fort Collins future. Trans-national pipelines would also impact ecological resources. A recent edition of The Desert Sun had twoletters objectingto piping water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River, and on to California. I think the feasibility study is likely to tell us what we already know, he said, which is that there are a lot less expensive, less complicated options that we can be investing in right now, like reducing water use. These canals and pipelines are . Water thieves abound in dry California. Diverting that water also means spreading problems, like pollutants, excessive nutrients and invasive species. This latest version would curve up through the Wyoming flatlands and back down to Fort Collins, a distance of around 340 miles. Moreover, we need water in our dams for hydroelectric power as well as for drinking and irrigation, so we would power the Hoover, Glen Canyon and Parker dams. and Renstrom says that unless Utah builds a long-promised pipeline to pump water 140 miles from Lake . Who is going to come to the desert and use it? and Renstrom says that unless Utah builds a long-promised pipeline to pump water 140 miles from Lake . One method for simulating streamflow and base flow, random forest (RF) models, was developed from the data at gaged sites and, in turn, was . Doug Ducey signed legislation this past July that invested $1.2 billion to fund projects that conserve water and bring more into the state. "Sometimes there is a propensity in areas like Louisiana or the Southwest, where we've had such success in our engineering marvels, to engineer our way out of everything," Newman said. Design and build by Upstatement. Local hurdles include endangered species protections, wetlands protections, drinking water supply considerations and interstate shipping protections. I can't even imagine what it would all cost. All rights reserved. Among its provisions, the law granted the states water infrastructure finance authority to investigate the feasibility of potential out-of-state water import agreements. He said hes open to one but doesnt think its necessary. I have dystopian nightmares aboutpipelines marching across the landscape, saidglobal water scarcity expert Jay Famiglietti. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Improved simulations of streamflow and base flow for selected sites within and adjacent to the Mississippi River Alluvial Plain area are important for modeling groundwater flow because surface-water flows have a substantial effect on groundwater levels. "We're going to start to see these reservoirs, which nine of them are already filled from the rain water, so then you add on snow melt and we may have some problems with that as far as flooding . People need to focus on their realistic solutions.. Officials imposed the state's first-ever water restrictions on cities and towns, and California farmers are drilling deeper and . Drought conditions plagued the region throughout 2022, for instance, prompting concerns over river navigation. For instance, a Kansas groundwater management agency received a permit last year to truck 6,000 gallons of Missouri River water into Kansas and Colorado in hopes of recharging an aquifer. The two reasons: 1) the process of moving water that far, and that high, wouldn't make economic sense; 2) Great Lakes water is locked down politically. States have [historically] been very successful in getting the federal government to pay for wasteful, unsustainable, large water projects, said Denise Fort, a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico who has studied water infrastructure. It would cost at least $1,700 per acre-feet of water, potentially yield 600,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2060 and take 30 years to construct. This One thousand mile long pipeline could move water from the Eastern USA (Great Lakes, Ohio River, Missouri River, and Mississippi River) to the Colorado River via the Mississippi River. As a resident of Wisconsin, a state that borders the (Mississippi) river, let me say: This is never gonna happen, wrote Margaret Melville of Cedarburg, Wisconsin. To the editor: With the threat of brownouts and over-stressed power grids, dwindling water resources in California and the call to reduce consumption by 15%, I want to point out we are not all in this together. Just this past summer, the idea caused a firestorm of letters to the editor at a California newspaper. In northwestern Iowa, a river has repeatedly been pumped dry by a rural water utility that sells at least a quarter of the water outside the state.
