With The Annual Fooding In The North MidWest... Is This Even Possible On A Nationwide Scale ???

[WillyT]

They don't want the water, we (CA, TX, Etc...) need the water...



Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. I would like more fooding and less flooding.

Minnesota is waterlogged and I would love to send some of this water to California.

[csziggy]

2. Food won't flow down an aqeduct very well

Water might!

[kentauros]

34. Why a duck?

Whya no chicken?



http://www.metacafe.com/embed/4493024/

[NutmegYankee]

3. Given the cost to pump the water over the rocky mountains...

California should look into desalination.

[WillyT]

6. If You Took A Southern Route... You Could Do It...

Hell... looks like a northern route might do it to.



Relieving SoCal Of Needing NorCal's Water, would be a major relief.

[NutmegYankee]

19. That's a simplified map and it's in meters

The best route is roughly 1000 meters in elevation change. In reality, the terrain will vary up and down and the piping would need multiple pump stations along the route to keep the water flowing against the losses due to friction. You would need a pump station capable of putting out 1500 Pounds per square inch (PSI) of pressure to overcome that kind of elevation change. The typical municipal system is 30-60 psi. The only other way is to pump to reservoirs at ever increasing height, which is even more difficult as you have to plan, site, and build them.

There are lot of engineering challenges to such a project.

[WillyT]

20. Maybe... But It's Also An Infrastructure Project... And Would Hire People For Years...

[NutmegYankee]

21. With current technology, it's not a very feasible project.

If we had unlimited money, maybe it could be done.

[WillyT]

22. We Have Unlimited Moey For War... It Appears...

[NutmegYankee]

23. It would cost far more than the desert wars.

The engineering challenges are quite something. To supply the kind of volume required to properly supply California would require massive pumps, but large flow rate pumps don't generate a lot of pressure. Large piping to handle that kind of pressure is disgustingly expensive. And I don't know if we have piping large enough for that kind of pressure to support the required flow rate.

Maybe because I'm a fluid systems engineer I see the challenges when others see the "vision".

[WillyT]

25. Thank You For That... My OP Was Looking For Answers Like That... Yet...

With Pacific Islands soon to go underwater...

And Florida to do the same in the next hundred years or so...

With future super storms headed our way...

How does your engineering background infrom you on those future problems ???

Not being snotty... I'd truly like to know.

[NutmegYankee]

26. It depends on the sea level rise.

A few feet can be accommodated with sea walls, dikes, and such. Anything higher will require resettlement. If the sea level rises by 10 feet, much of the US Coast line cannot be saved. While the Dutch have long reclaimed land from the sea with a series of dikes, it was done with a static sea level and lower intensity storms. I fear our future will be quite an "adventure" for humanity.

Super storms are going to cause damage, and all we can do is try to build resistance into our structures to deal with it.

[WillyT]

28. Thank You !!!

It just seem like there are big things we could do mitigate our future situation.

And while the GOP blocks them now, I'd still like to hear about them... I bet most would.

[Jamastiene]

38. +1000000

There is ALWAYS money for war, I have noticed.

[NYC_SKP]

4. Don't fool with mother nature.

I've been a part of the water wars of the golden state since childhood, when my grandmother supplemented the household income by collecting samples of river water for the state. The proposed peripheral canal was under consideration that long ago, 50 years.

We can't have a healthy delta AND please the ranchers in former deserts in the south central valley and consumers in Southern California as it is, and now they want to build two new tunnels.

The Arizona River doesn't even reach the sea anymore for all the exploitation the several states conduct at its expense.

Thusly, I'm not interested at all in some huge interstate water project.

We need to stop living beyond our environmental means are need to return to respecting nature as we found it, not trying to "master" it for our own purposes.

IMHO.

[2naSalit]

8. ^^THIS^^...

times a kazillion!

[WillyT]

9. Agree... But... We Do It With The Electrical Grid... Send The Resources Where They Are Most Needed..

And I'm thinking of the people who are getting flooded EVERY SINGLE YEAR...

If we could somehow divert that water to fill our reservoirs... seems like win/win.

[NYC_SKP]

18. We need every bit of our electric generation capacity to get off fossil fuels.

And we need to get people out of internal combustion engines and into electric vehicles and electric public transport, which puts further strain on the grid.

For water, we need to promote conservation, grey water systems, discourage lawns, outlaw water waste, like washing cares with drinking water

We also need to stop building in flood plains, one of the most obvious solutions.

And we can wean ourselves of water intensive crops and move away from beef and pork operations, even more water intensive.

[magical thyme]

10. agreed!

[Texasgal]

12. I agree.

We've been in a a very tough drought for several years now. I say conservation and water wise is the way to go. Yes, that means no green st. augustine lawns!

[WillyT]

13. You Realize 71% Of The Earth Is Covered In Water...

[Texasgal]

15. Yes. I do.

We also waste so much of it. Water conservation is the way to go in my opinion. Wasteful is wasteful.

[A HERETIC I AM]

5. Yes it is possible and I have been thinking we should do this for years.

The system could easily be designed to flow both ways, moving water from where there is plenty to where there is none.

As the poster above suggests, it would be expensive to pump it over the Rockies, but you don't really have to pump it all the way up. Just high enough to shortcut it to a tributary of the Colorado, if not the Colorado itself.

Hell, from say...Des Moines or St. Louis to Denver, you would still have to raise it 2/3 of a mile.

Personally I think such a nationwide system is inevitable.

[NutmegYankee]

30. The Colorado River is really high up in elevation.

Or at least the land around it is... The tributaries and start of the river are way up on the Colorado plateau. You could try to go to the Gila River way in the south, but even it is 5000 feet at the beginning.

You have to get past the "Brown wall":

[A HERETIC I AM]

37. Yup. If you are going to get water from the Mississippi to the West....

You are going to have to get it up over 4500' at least.

But storms happen on the Eastern front range as well, that's why I say the system could be designed to flow both ways.

There have been droughts in Georgia while it flooded in the high plains. Texas is dry now but the Ohio Valley and the Southeast has had plenty of water recently.

This is how we move crude oil around;



It can be done. Water needs to move in an aqueduct though. The volume needed is too high to try and run it through a pipeline.

[Lochloosa]

7. Food goes in then goes out. Then there is a flood

[Politicalboi]

11. Been thinking this for years myself

I know damn well we as a country would do it if it were oil.

[IDemo]

14. Desalination is the way to go

The merits of pumping or otherwise moving large volumes of water between regions vs. desalinating it were studied and it's no contest:

Other massive engineering projects, including building aqueducts to bring water from Washington's Snake and Columbia rivers, a tunnel under the Pacific Ocean to import water from Alaska, towing icebergs to California, or using water bags or tanker vessels to transport water, were deemed much too expensive to be considered practical in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation study. Their cost was at least 50% more than using desalinized water.

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/more-water-for-california-new-enormous-water-works-programs-are-expen

[moondust]

16. And flooding is unpredictable.

Sometimes floods, sometimes drought.

Desalination would be more reliable and controllable over time.

[IDemo]

17. Not to mention,

You would also need to build a massive network of canals and reservoirs to gather and store the flood water in order to route it where needed.

[HereSince1628]

24. If Texas respected water, Texans wouldn't frack away the share nature

gives them in the middle of droughts while residents of small towns go thirsty.

Which is basically the problem with interstate transportation of water...

Once it's commoditized and transported for sale, users with money will get to use it and others not.
Can we recognize things are already pretty out of whack, when folks in Detroit have less chance to drink water than frackers in Texas?

If the midwest has an economic future, it's likely because of the freshwater resources we have. We'd be silly to send it to Waco or Phoenix or L.A.

Many big rivers that hydrate the world are fed from mountain intercepted precip, and that resource is very threatened by climate change. Looking around the world, the grandchildren of current midwesterners will have a pretty fair chance to rebuild the "Rust Belt" into a strong economy if we don't rob the future of what is sure to be very scarce very valuable essential resource.



As it is, if you want it you can always buy it retail, ... flavored with hops and barley.

[Spider Jerusalem]

27. No, it's not possible.

Interbasin transfers across thousands of miles require terawatts of energy for pumping (think a dozen new nuclear plants). Transfer of water from the Great Lakes to elsewhere is forbidden by treaty with Canada.

[WillyT]

29. Most Of The Rivers That Flood, Do Not Originate At The Great Lakes...

The Great Lake empties into the Saint Lawrence Seaway... I believe.

[Spider Jerusalem]

31. It's not JUST the Great Lakes, it's any river or watershed shared between the US and Canada.

http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-17/page-1.html

On edit: It's time for Texas to stop using billions of gallons of water for fracking in a water-stressed and drought-prone area, and it's time for California to stop growing food in the desert, and it's time for people to stop MOVING to the desert. I'm sorry, but you have no right or reason to expect the expenditure of trillions on major infrastructure projects to support millions of people living in areas with insufficient water.

[WillyT]

32. California Feeds A Whole Lot Of The U.S. And The Planet... You Want To Cut Off That Food Source ???

[Spider Jerusalem]

33. Unsustainably.

If there's not water to support it, spending trillions of dollars to transport water from elsewhere, thereby stressing other watersheds, is not a viable solution.

On edit: Look at what's been going on in the Colorado River basin, and at the long-term prospectus for Lakes Mead and Powell. Agriculture in the West has no long-term sustainable future.

[WillyT]

35. So What Happens To Society/Civilization When Food Prices Spike, Fresh Water Is Rare, And Energy...

Becomes Unaffordable.

[Spider Jerusalem]

36. We'll find that out in about 20 or 30 years, if not sooner.

We're basically fucked, the only real question is how long it'll take to become evident.