Let's Build a Water Pipeline From the Pacific Ocean to Lake Mead

[conehead433]

Sounds crazy doesn't it. Lake Mead is the largest capacity water reservoir in the United States and serves water to the states of Arizona, California, and Nevada, as well as some of Mexico, providing sustenance to nearly 20 million people and large areas of farmland At just under 300 miles from the Pacific Ocean a pipeline is certainly feasible when you consider that the Colonial Pipeline for oil consisting of two tubes extends between Texas and New York and can deliver 3 million barrels of fuel per day.
Lake Mead has been going dry for years and the west will probably always be in some sort of drought crisis. Solar power could be used to provide power to pumps after the water is desalinated. A reservoir could be built along the way somewhere in southern California to provide water for LA and all those thirsty almonds and stuff grown in the area. Having a filled reservoir also helps produce more electricity and pumping water out of oceans (on a huge scale) could temporarily help mitigate rising sea levels.
So why haven't we already done this? It's not oil, and no one is going to line politician's pockets to get a water pipeline.

 

[K1052]

Dumping expensive desalinated water into Mead to evaporate or flooded into almond groves is nothing but setting huge piles of money on fire.

 

[IronWing]

Desalinization is very expensive, otherwise we already would be doing this all over the place.

 

[Hans Gruber]

Water from the Columbia River. There is enough water to irrigate the entire western US.

 

[sdifox]

Desalinization is very expensive, otherwise we already would be doing this all over the place.

You could juat trap the moisure from salt production. Put salt water in big ponds, cover it with rows of platic sheets and troughs, condensation will flow down to trough. When all water is evaporated, scoop up salt and repeat process. That salt can be processed for use or spread back into the ocean to combat desalination of the ocean due to ice melt.

 

[Greenman]

I wonder how many millions of acres of condensation ponds this would require?

 

[IronWing]

I wonder how many millions of acres of condensation ponds this would require?

The idea of placing the condensation sheets over the open ocean has been floated.

 

[K1052]

Everybody wants some simple cheap amazing solution when its mostly just going to be a combination of storage projects, desalination, and toilet to tap projects that only the places with money can afford.

 

[IronWing]

Everybody wants some simple cheap amazing solution when its mostly just going to be a combination of storage projects, desalination, and toilet to tap projects that only the places with money can afford.

The cheap solution is to stop using the bulk of the available fresh water supplies to grow cattle feed in the desert.

 

[K1052]

The cheap solution is to stop using the bulk of the available fresh water supplies to grow cattle feed in the desert.

Well yes, I also would not let CA valley farmers empty all the aquifers for their water intensive export crops but clearly that's not going to happen either. The rural west will be F'd sooner or later for good once there is literally nothing else to take. The cities will be ok because they can afford things.

 

[herm0016]

Everybody wants some simple cheap amazing solution when its mostly just going to be a combination of storage projects, desalination, and toilet to tap projects that only the places with money can afford.

But the places with money fight to make sure these things don't happen in their backyard. It took 20 years and Boulder county spent millions fighting just increasing capacity at a reservoir that already exists here.

 

[KB]

I think we need to pump Mississippi flood waters to Lake mead. Kill two birds with one stone: reduce floods in one area and and hydrate the other.

 

[K1052]

But the places with money fight to make sure these things don't happen in their backyard. It took 20 years and Boulder county spent millions fighting just increasing capacity at a reservoir that already exists here.

Rural California approves of storage projects because its state money and they stand to benefit. Boulder is....Boulder.

 

[KB]

Well yes, I also would not let CA valley farmers empty all the aquifers for their water intensive export crops but clearly that's not going to happen either. The rural west will be F'd sooner or later for good once there is literally nothing else to take. The cities will be ok because they can afford things.

The cities won't be able to afford food as California is the largest producer of food in the US and US farmers produce the lowest-cost food in the world.

California farms produce a lot of food – but what and how much might surprise you

California has 25.5 million acres of farm and ranch land.

www.ocregister.com

They definitely won''t be able to afford Almonds as most of the worlds almonds are grown in California. Means no Almond milk for city folk.

80% of the World’s Almonds Come From California

While almonds are grown in 7 other countries, about 80% of the world’s supply come from California. Want more Agriculture Facts? Check out AgHires Ag Facts

blog.aghires.com

This is definately an issue I wish there was an easy fix for, as it benefits everyone to have affordable farm produce.

 

[K1052]

The cities won't be able to afford food as California is the largest producer of food in the US and US farmers produce the lowest-cost food in the world.

California farms produce a lot of food – but what and how much might surprise you

California has 25.5 million acres of farm and ranch land.

www.ocregister.com

They definitely won''t be able to afford Almonds as most of the worlds almonds are grown in California. Means no Almond milk for city folk.

80% of the World’s Almonds Come From California

While almonds are grown in 7 other countries, about 80% of the world’s supply come from California. Want more Agriculture Facts? Check out AgHires Ag Facts

blog.aghires.com

This is definately an issue I wish there was an easy fix for, as it benefits everyone to have affordable farm produce.

We're going to make a transition from not growing things where you really shouldn't to growing them where you should sooner or later out of necessity.

 

[IronWing]

The cities won't be able to afford food as California is the largest producer of food in the US and US farmers produce the lowest-cost food in the world.

California farms produce a lot of food – but what and how much might surprise you

California has 25.5 million acres of farm and ranch land.

www.ocregister.com

They definitely won''t be able to afford Almonds as most of the worlds almonds are grown in California. Means no Almond milk for city folk.

80% of the World’s Almonds Come From California

While almonds are grown in 7 other countries, about 80% of the world’s supply come from California. Want more Agriculture Facts? Check out AgHires Ag Facts

blog.aghires.com

This is definately an issue I wish there was an easy fix for, as it benefits everyone to have affordable farm produce.

The bulk of the water is used for cattle feed, not all the produce California is famous for.

 

[Brainonska511]

I think we need to pump Mississippi flood waters to Lake mead. Kill two birds with one stone: reduce floods in one area and and hydrate the other.

Pumping water hundreds of miles sounds like an extremely energy intensive process when you factor in distance and elevation differences.

 

[herm0016]

Pumping water hundreds of miles sounds like an extremely energy intensive process when you factor in distance and elevation differences.

it may not be too terrible if we can use the downhill to produce energy to pump it back up, but yes, overall a large expenditure of energy. and doing hydro along the way increases cost a lot.

 

[conehead433]

I did not realize that water desalination was so expensive. Apparently not expensive enough to discourage California from having 12 desalination plants currently. One of these plants provides about 12% of the water for San Diego. Obviously making the whole process less expensive would certainly help. It also does not help that it takes massive amounts of water to grow nuts and a good bit to grow everything else as well. Water or money.

 

[K1052]

I did not realize that water desalination was so expensive. Apparently not expensive enough to discourage California from having 12 desalination plants currently. One of these plants provides about 12% of the water for San Diego. Obviously making the whole process less expensive would certainly help. It also does not help that it takes massive amounts of water to grow nuts and a good bit to grow everything else as well. Water or money.

Recycling projects are cheaper, I think $500-600 an acre foot, than desalination but only somewhat recently have people overcome the ick factor.

 

[vi edit]

So sort of a stupid question...but say you did build some kind pipeline from the midwest to the west...

Is there risk of introducing invasive species that aren't native to that area that can wreck havoc on local water systems? I assume you can filter some of it, but eventually...life finds a way.

 

[BoomerD]

Water from the Columbia River. There is enough water to irrigate the entire western US.

Keep yer filthy water-grubbin hands off our PNW water!

 

[Zorba]

I did the math a couple month ago:

Okay, I did the math. Assuming you completely replace the Lake Mead flow of 9.8M acre-feet/yr. You'd need a 60 foot diameter pipeline, that never had any down time.

View attachment 45935

Even if you just made up for the current annual deficit it would need to be 21 feet in diameter.

View attachment 45936

The pumping energy would likely represent at least a few new nuclear power plants.

1.2M acre-feet/yr is the equivalent of 34 Million Barrels/day, or 12x the referenced pipeline. It probably also couldn't operate year-round, so that drives it to be even larger.

People lack an understanding of the true scale of the amount of water carried by rivers and held in lakes.

 

[BoomerD]

Well yes, I also would not let CA valley farmers empty all the aquifers for their water intensive export crops but clearly that's not going to happen either. The rural west will be F'd sooner or later for good once there is literally nothing else to take. The cities will be ok because they can afford things.

Yep. Takes approx. 1 gallon of water to produce one almond. Those aren't even food crops...they're snacks.

 

[BoomerD]

Rural California approves of storage projects because its state money and they stand to benefit. Boulder is....Boulder.

The ones who benefit from CA water aren't the farmers or citizens, it's the billionaires...like the Reznicks.

Kalifornien: Wasser und Macht (2017) ⭐ 7.3 | Documentary

1h 27m | PG

m.imdb.com