We NEED a pipeline in America

[Xithras]

63. There is no such thing as "massive excess rain".

Those floodwaters are the only thing keeping the Louisiana bayou from vanishing completely, and are required if we're ever going to restore it. Wanting to divert that water simply makes you another voice calling for environmental destruction in the name of "human progress". Those waters perform critical environmental functions in the southern marshlands, help to flush sediments from the Mississippi river to keep it navigable for commerce, and are important for maintaining salinity levels in the northern Gulf of Mexico (the northern gulf would be considerably saltier without the Mississippi flowing in).

Besides, as others have mentioned, the energy costs would be staggering. To build a pipeline capable of carrying an amount of water equivalent to the Hetch Hetchy aqueduct (small by modern standards, and generally only suitable for drinking water) you would need to lift that water at least 5000 feet. Without even getting into the energy losses to friction, bends in the pipe, inefficiency, etc, you're already talking about 3.75 gigawatts of power to LIFT the water.

If you want to doublecheck my math, I presumed a lift from St.Louis Missouri at 466' in elevation and a path crossing New Mexico, allowing some serious tunnelling to keep the overall elevation gain to only 5000 feet or so. Lifting one acre-foot of water by one foot requires 2,719,226 ft-lbs of energy, so lifting 730 acre/feet (the average daily capacity of the Hetch Hetchy system) by 5000 vertical feet would require 9,925,174,900,000 ft-lbs of force. One horsepower is equal to 33,000 foot pounds per minute so a little bit of math gives us 300,762,876 horse power minutes. Divide that by 60 for hours and we get 5,012,715 horsepower hours. Because 1 horsepower hour = 0.746 KWH, that pencils out to 3,739,485 KW hrs of electricity, or roughly 3.75 gigawatts. That's roughly 3 nuclear power plants worth of electricity. And again, that's JUST FOR THE VERTICAL LIFT, and presumes 100% efficiency for both the pumps and the rest of the transportation process, and assumes zero energy requirements for the horizontal movement of the water.

I don't care HOW "inefficient" desalinization is, it's going to be a hell of a lot more "efficient" that burning 3.75 gigawatts of electricity just to lift a relatively small amount of water over the Continental Divide. Also, keep in mind that 730 acre feet will keep the kitchen taps flowing in Los Angeles, but it isn't going to do a damned thing for the farmers or any other water users, or for any cities other than Los Angeles...that's a lot of power for not very much water.