5 Crazy Schemes We May Turn to For More Water [View all]

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http://www.alternet.org/water/5-crazy-schemes-we-may-turn-more-water



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1. Sin City Gets Thirsty

Las Vegas has become the poster child for water scarcity in the U.S. The manmade oasis in the desert seems to embody water opulence — giant fountains, green lawns, golf courses, outside misters, canals. All the while estimates say the metropolis’s water source — Colorado River water stored behind Hoover Dam in Lake Mead — is running low. In the next few decades it is possible that Las Vegas’ intake pipes in the lake, which supply 90 percent of the city’s water, may be sucking air.

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2. Lake Powell Pipe Dream


The only thing making parts of the desert Southwest livable is the vast plumbing network we’ve concocted. And apparently we’re not done yet. It’s not just the Las Vegas region that is hell-bent on growth, but so are parts of neighboring Utah around the town of St. George in Washington County.


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3. Friends in Wet Places

In a guest commentary two years ago in the Denver Post , John M. Barbieri and Deborah A. Palmieri suggested that Russia can and should aid the drying American west. With vast water resources, Babrieri and Palmieri say that Russia is “poised to become a major exporter.” And that the U.S. and Russia “should harness the ingenuity, technology and resources necessary to transfer water from remote locations to a thirsty world, including to the U.S. west coast.”


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4. Caution: Oversized Load

French engineer Georges Mougin is a big thinker. Especially when it comes to our global water crisis. As Fast Company reports :

There are 1.1 billion people in the world without clean drinking water. Meanwhile, billions of gallons of freshwater disappears uselessly into the ocean, the result of icebergs that break off from the ice caps of Greenland and melt into the salty mix.