Moving Water
 

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.

For the exact same reason The Villages is not allow to move water between counties. Water is the basis of life and maintaining that balance as much as possible, sustains life as we know it.

Oceans cover 70% of the earth. The is not, nor has there ever been, a shortage of available water. There's a shortage of will to operate desalination plants.

There are some things only God can control.

It is a well proven fact that engineers can move water. The Army of Corps of Engineers even stopped the water from flowing over Niagra Falls in 1969.

But, a gallon of oil costs about $2.40 as compared to a gallon of water at $0.002. So, crude oil is worth about 1200 times as much as raw water. I think that may have something to do with why they don't spend money to move water.

The Romans developed the technology in about 300 BC. But, I bet at least for California desalination and/or membrane filtration using inexpensive solar energy would be cheaper.

We're not talking about just moving water...we're talking about moving water that's uncontrollable without dams. so what you're suggesting is that oil(just sitting in shale or sand or pools is the same as water moving at quite a rate with no way to coral it without building a massive series of dams and directional barriers. Also you don't know when the rains will cause flooding...you'd have to filter out all the debris(trees, houses, cars, rocks dead animals, etc).

It doesn't take a genius to come up with a truly viable solution to a problem, but it does take a lot of common sense. this idea...while it sounds neat...is useless.

The Villages moves water and controls flooding all the time. They pump water from one retention pond to another, and they turn on the sprinkler system to lower pond levels.

It appears to me that the western part of our nation cannot support its current population.

It already happens in Massachusetts. Most of the potable water used in the greater Boston area is brought in via pipes from the Quabbin Reservoir in western Mass.

Isn’t it surprising we have been convinced to buy bottled water because domestically purified city/county water isn’t as good for consumption.
Sumter County has wells and a company actually transports water by tanker trucks to Ocala for processing and bottling.
As kids we would drink from a hose bib or out of the kitchen faucet guess water purifications standards were driven by cost reductions the bottled water industry was created.
There are actually water machines in some supermarkets that have convinced people to refill 5 gallon jugs with what? Filtered City/County water.

But think of the damage caused by water or lack thereof in those two areas. I would guess that the thousands of homes, cars and other properties that are lost every year add up to much more than the difference between the cost of water and oil. Then we should consider the number of lives lost.

I agree. The earth is a closed system. It's not a matter of a shortage of water. It's a matter of distribution.

Problem is.
Not much gets done, when you work from home!

So very true we are a bunch of water snobs

People can move. Personally, I think it is a water of money to spend billions of dollars so that people can live in New Orleans at below sea level. Or, to continue to rebuild property that gets flooded out every few years.

Agreed they should live in those areas at their own risk and pay for any repairs out of their own pocket.

California can build desalinization plants, and pump water in from the Pacific.

Don’t worry we’ll be in another ice age in maybe 5,000 years and don’t even think of bringing up climate change as an issue. We are in the middle of Summer rainy season and they are pumping water in the new section to prevent home flooding let’s build more homes in a swamp.

A lot of truth to that, especially when I see bottled water from FIJI, Evian from Europe etc.

Per the original idea, idea is OK but ? the logistics. Am sure that the environmentalists will have their lobbyists involved. No easy answer to this water problem.

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.

Who'll stop the rain
 

whatever happened to cloud seeding ?

There were plans for desalination plants in San Diego and Los Angeles for the last several years, courts have decided for the voters not to allow these. A desalination plant costs anywhere from 1 to 2 billion dollars and California has a 100 billion dollar Surplus so it's not the money, it's the will of the people and the stupidity of others

New Orleans was the biggest waste of money to control their sea level City

Amen

I lived in Santa Barbara in my teens and back then they had water problems: their source of drinking water was on the other side of the mountains and it would run low. So the city of SB built a desalination plant which cost them $30m. For the next 20-30 years, the plant was more off than on. Then in 2017 after the plant was dormant for years, the city paid $70M to reactivate the plant and the county voted to run the plant consistently. So there are ways to provide water in California but they choose not too. California has also done very little in forest management because of the activist groups for decades. IMO, California’s lack of infrastructure maintenance (remember the dam that eroded/broke a couple years ago was caused by lack of maintenance, and the state knew this could happen for 10 years) has contributed to what are have been seeing these last few years. I agree the drought hasn’t helped, but Californian’s still water their lawns and wash their cars

The problem is more of a legal thing than a physical thing. Say Minnesota with all our lakes and rivers. We could pipe water there but we would have to sign a contract for x million gallons of water per y. If a drought hits, guess who won’t get water, the locals that don’t live in that hell hole out west.

You pay for it!
 

These area's water supplies have been steadily dwindling for decades. The taxpayers should not have to pay for fools who bought homes there. Can you believe that a sane person would pay $500,000+ for a home and no well with the understanding that water had to be trucked in? Now they are crying the blues because their previous water supply areas are holding onto what water they have for their own communities. Caveat emptor!

One problem with building a pipeline from the Mississippi (assuming that one could build a pipeline big enough) to the west coast is that eventually the Mississippi would be like the Colorado river. The Colorado has been reduced dramatically before it hits the Pacific Ocean for decades now. (Google Colorado River Delta).

Even if we could do this, it would have no effect on the wildfires. Maybe Joni Mitchell was right -

They took all the trees
Put ‘‘em in a tree museum
And they charged all the people an arm and a just to see ‘em

Buying water in bottles is an abomination. People who do it don't care about the environment at all, think of the plastic waste. 91% of plastic is not recycled. 22 billion plastic bottles wind up in landfills.

Water comes out of faucets, fill a pitcher and put it in your fridge.

It would be one thing if New Orleans was AT sea level, but it is not. Look at a topographical map of that region. New Orleans sits in a bowl that is below the levels of both the Gulf and Lake Pontchartrain. Build all the levees you want, sooner or later Mother Nature will show them who's the boss.

It went out with the rain dance....

Wonder if we can get the village females to do a rain dance when needed.

If you build it, they will come, maybe
 

say whattttt !!!!

I said that years ago when discussing it with friends. They looked at me and laughed.

Have you bought bottled water lately more expensive than gas. They can move the water but can they do it less than desalination?

Water Use in CA
 

Cities and towns are approximately 10% of the water consumption in CA.

I don't know but that doesn't solve the flooding problems.

As far as trying to move all this water after a flood has happened I would think that a system could be set up to start catching rain water as soon as it starts raining. Meteorologists have a pretty good idea when there is going to be a little rain or when there will be enough rain to cause devastation. A rain water capture system should be able to be turned off and on.

Of course this would be a huge project and would cost possibly trillions of dollars. But IMHO, our government wastes so much money on things that really don't help anyone. And I agree that it would never get done because of the politics involved.

What you are describing is exactly what the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing for decades along our major rivers. They have a coordinated system of lakes and dams constructed along the river, and they monitor and control the water levels of the lakes to prevent flooding downstream. The dams have large valves that can be opened and closed to establish an exact and safe water level in the lakes to minimize flooding of developed areas.

It was the Oroville Dam crisis. Excessive weather event (rain) caused dam to overflow and spillway failed do excess water

When lake mead and all western lakes go dry water will be more valuable than oil. That could happen in few more years. Colorado had plans to divert north platte River for Denver water shed, but Nebraska own’s the water rights and said hello no.

Plus the desert states are wasting water growing grass in desert. Until somebody says this is stoopid the lakes still fall.
For water to be diverted from northern Missouri River and other tributaries federal government will have to use eminent domain to eliminate all the water rights across states. Plus not easy to pump water over the continental divide.

A lot of people seem to be focusing on the fires in California. I'd also like to solve the problem of the floods in the middle and southern part of the country that seem to happen every year.

Like I said, it's not a lack of water problem, it's a distribution problem. We, as a nation, really should be able to deal with these problems that occur year after year. It's really a shame that we don't.