Mother Nature doesn’t distribute water evenly. That’s our job. Let’s get on with it.
In response to Janet Wilson's Aug. 14 story, "Pipe dream or possible? Experts weigh in on idea of sending Mississippi River water to West," it's clear that many experts think diverting a fairly small amount of Mississippi River water to Lake Powell is doable from an engineering and construction standpoint, but impossible from an approval and political standpoint.
This seems to me implausible. If you never attempt something because it is hard, we can never do anything. Following that philosophy, we wouldn’t have a Panama Canal, New York City (because we wouldn’t have built the Catskill aqueduct), the Golden Gate Bridge, or gone to the moon and back. John F. Kennedy said, “We didn’t decide to go to the moon because it's easy. We did it because it’s hard.”
The bottom line is that, as CNN, ABC, NBC, and Fox News have been reporting, a disaster is in the making on the Colorado River. We don’t need the 1964 immense plan. We just need to get an amount of water similar to that which goes down the California aqueduct (100,000-125,000 gallons/second) to Lake Powell and then on down to Lake Mead.
If the Chinese can do it, we can too. Yes, the water would have to probably be treated somehow, but the Atchafalaya Basin, where the diverted water currently goes, cleans up a lot of it and maybe this won’t be as big a problem as some people think. There are technical people already in place who know how to clean water.
I am not qualified to accurately estimate how long it would take to build such an aqueduct or pipeline, but in World War II, we built two oil pipelines from Texas to New Jersey (1,400 miles) over 200 streams and under (!) the Mississippi River in less than a year.
Excavating and boring technology have improved immensely since then. For example, the Dutch use a machine known as the Backacter 1100 to dredge and build their many canals and dikes. This monstrous machine can in one scoop dig out 1,800 cubic feet of dirt 51 feet deep! Put a dozen of these things chomping away along Interstate highways in Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico and I think we’d have a trench in no time. You could probably sell tickets to let people watch.
There might be some places on the West Coast where existing technology desalinization plants could supply drinking water. As for desalinating water at scale for agricultural use, which is what we need, it simply isn’t possible with known technology. We need at least a 10x increase in water volume at 10x lower cost compared to current technology. The government should be funding massive research into desalinization, which is not being done.
In the meantime, we are stuck with Mother Nature’s desalinization process: ocean water evaporation, to clouds, to rain, to land, to rivers and back to the ocean. Even though this generates enough water for every person and every use, Mother Nature doesn’t distribute the water evenly.
That’s clearly our job. Let’s get on with it.
Don Siefkes lives in San Leandro. Email him at donsiefkes@aol.com
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: We need to move water from Midwest west. let's get on with it
