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Originally Posted by Dr Winston O Boogie jr
It seems to every year at this time we’re witnessing severe drought and devastating fires in California while torrential rains and flooding in the southern mid west. I see that we can move billions of gallons of oil from Canada to Texas and I wonder why we can’t move billions of gallons of water from flooded areas to drought impacted areas. I used to think this was absurd but the I thought about the oil pipeline. I’d bet that engineers exist that could do this.
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The problem is one of magnitude. (And as someone else mentioned, cost per gallon).
1. I grew up in S. Florida at a time when the sugar cane farmers in central Florida needed more water, so they got Florida to build a canal system with the worlds largest pumps (at that time) so they could move all the "extra" water from south Florida and the Everglades up to their farms when they needed it, and back down to S. Florida when they had too much.
It did not go well, For a decade or two we had floods and all kinds of unexpected problems. The canals became clogged with over growth of water plants which multiplied like crazy because the constantly moving water tore them up and spread them. They brought in an invasive species of fish to eat the plants and they got out of control. So, they brought in another invasive species of fish to control them, and on and on. Anyway, you can read about it using google. It too a LONG time to get it mostly working and there are still some parts that don't work too well.
2. The magnitude of water needed is vastly larger than the oil being moved in pipes. A acre foot of water is about 325,000 gallons. The reservoir, Lake Meade, held roughly 30 million acre-feet of water (that is just one of MANY reservoirs) which comes out to about 10 trillion gallons of water for one reservoir and it is drying up. (look up Lake Meade and see what is happening there - 25 million people are running out of water that use that one "lake").
We all recall I am sure of the time, cost and issues around the Keystone pipeline extension. The extension would have moved around 20 million gallons of oil per day. At that rate it would take a year to move the water held by Lake Meade...
I agree, it seems like it could be done - technically, and maybe it could, but we can't ever pass a bill in Congress today to treat vets with deadly conditions as a result of serving the country because of well - you know the "P" word. And that was a cost of just $30 million per year.
Imagine the cost of moving trillions of gallons of water across the country. Imagine all the National, State, and local politics of running that pipeline, and the graft of all the pork barrels bills to fund it.
And then there is the cost of running the pumps to move all that water. Most people could not afford to pay what the water would cost to just pay the operating expenses, much less to recoup the cost to build all the pipelines.
And then imagine the law suits of people that are having THEIR water shipped off to other people. Ahem...
I think I heard Bill Maher propose the same thing a few months(?) ago. And I did a little googling to find out how practical it was/is. It appears to be possible but not likely.