Fixing the Southwest's water problem or "Drain baby drain"

[sarisataka]

Everyone is aware of the severe drought in many western states and the painful restrictions they are facing. Some folks have noticed that just up the road a ways are these things call the Great Lakes that have a lot of water.

Now we have the small issue of getting the water from there to here. Also some pesky laws and treaties, since we share most of these lakes with Canada, are in the way but money solves everything. Let's do some back of the envelope math to see what it will take.

Per USGS California used 38 billion gallons of water in 2010. Per day. A barrel is 42 gallons so for ease of calculations let's say we want to ship 1 billion barrels of water west each day. The states in need can split that up and fulfill their needs with local supply.

Infrastructure- the Alaska pipeline is about 800 miles long and can transport 2 million barrels per day. The distance from Chicago to LA is about 2000 miles. So we will need the equivalent of 500 Alaskan pipelines at 2.5 time the length. It cost $11bn in 1974, so say we find a contractor who will give us the same rates as 40 years ago-
500×2 5×11bn=$13.75 trillion. Um, let's amortize that over 100 years at 0% interest. That is $137.5bn per year, that's better.

Shipping- oil cost 50-75 cents to ship a barrel 1000mi. Since water is denser than oil we will use the higher rate.
2k mi×1bn barrels× 75=$1.5bn daily

Cost of resource- this will be the trickiest. The receiving states will say free since it is a "national resource" but it is a resource states are giving up. Plus Canada has an interest so will want something. We can be generous and say $.05 per gallon or $2.10 per barrel, $2 1bn daily for that water.

So pipeline cost $137.5bn /yr
Shipping $1.5bn×365= $547bn/yr
Water $2.1bn×365= $1,333.5bn/yr
Total cost $2.018 trillion per year to solve this problem.


Of course we should consider human nature. Will this cost make people learn to conserve resources and build/live with sustainable parameters? Or will the renewed availability of resources spur growth and use so we would eventually need to ship more than a billion barrels of water per day?

[Goodheart]

1. Desalinization of ocean water seems more feasible to me.

But I confess to never having done studies on the matter.

[Kaleva]

4. Agriculture will have to shift to the Upper Midwest

The dairy industry in CA consumed vast quantities of water.

[former9thward]

10. That is not going to happen.

If it was possible it would have already happened.

[NickB79]

21. The East and Midwest were already the center of US agriculture at one point

Vegetables, dairy, meat. There's a reason Wisconsin is the Cheesehead State and New Jersey the Garden State.

The reason a lot of agriculture flowed to the Southwest was due to three things: cheap land and irrigation water, a year-round growing season, and refrigerated trains and trucks. This is what made the economics work. Also, the ability to have year round vegetables that were once seasonal changed American's understanding of food, to the point that it's inconceivable when you can't get asparagus in January.

Now that cheap irrigation water is going the way of the dodo, the economics are shifting. Advances in greenhouse technology now allow at least some vegetables to be grown all year economically even in very cold climates. 40 miles down the road from me, Bushel Boy has massive greenhouses that produce 30 million pounds of tomatoes annually even when it's -30F outside.

https://www.southernminn.com/owatonna_peoples_press/news/berry-good-bushel-boy-continues-to-grow-in-size-and-options/article_a3800b3e-4b8f-5b30-a8e9-cf410f2f731a.html

The more expensive water in the Southwest becomes, the better greenhouse and hydroponic systems look. And ultimately, that will be why agriculture will flee the Southwest. The aridification we're seeing now at 1C of warming is nothing compared to where we'll be by mid-century with 2-3C of warming and evaporation.

[Omnipresent]

7. +1

[Kaleva]

2. +1

I think the idea of piping water from the Great Lakes to the Southwest will always remain a pipedream

[CrispyQ]

3. I watched a homemade video tour of Glen Canyon dam

& the lawn sprinklers were going in the middle of the day & water was running into the parking lot. The guy making the video complained to a groundskeeper who said it was all automatic & there was nothing he could do about it. Every single morning the rental house across the street from me has water running from their lawn down the sidewalk & into the gutter. So, to answer your question, we aren't conserving anything until the facets run dry.

Six billion miracles is enough. I bought that bumper sticker around the turn of the century. I wonder what human population will be come 2100?

[Ocelot II]

5. There's a law, the Great Lakes Compact, that prohibits talking water

from the Great Lakes Basin. It’s an agreement among seven States and Canada that was enacted into law in 2008. So none of these ideas matter; that water isn’t going anywhere. https://www.protectourgreatlakes.org/compact

[sarisataka]

9. That was the laws and treaties I alluded to

They would have to be renegotiated and there would be a price. I chose the $2.10 per barrel to reflect that knowing that number is likely ridiculously low.

My point was to illustrate that even using accounting tricks overcoming the engineering costs and low price assumptions the idea is prohibitively expensive. My simple calculations don't even consider maintenance, land costs, impact studies, litigation, etc. ad nauseum.

ETA> I have seen data that the current monthly water cost to a family of 4 ranges between $52-$77. Under this lowballed program even if industries pay 90% of the cost the cost of water to families will increase at least 10x.

[ForgedCrank]

6. Good luck

with this idea.
Those states (including Canada) aren't going to be very cooperative with the idea of selling their water supplies to folks who live in a desert.
Never going to happen.

[Mysterian]

8. What "painful restrictions?"

They're not doing Jack Shit.

[yellowdogintexas]

11. Summer monsoons in Arizona generate a lot of water.

Phoenix is poorly equipped to do anything with it.
These storms occur every August-September.

The July 30 storm caused significant flooding in North Phoenix, with rainfall total 2" in two hours; streets all around my daughter's house flooded. Her yard flooded and water seeped into her home. Once the rain stopped, the flood water was pumped into the storm drain.

A contributing factor is lack of sewer connections in her area. No one on her cul-de-sac connected to sewer when it was offered, so everyone is on septic.

Other areas near her suffered worse flooding, with 12 inches of water in homes.

Since that storm, there have been 3 more heavy rains, fortunately not in her section of the city.

Her street is a "designated flood runoff site"; there is only one storm drain (it looks like a letter slot compared to the storm drains here). The main cross street looked like a river.

Storm drains and proper diversion practices could redirect that water where it can be stored for future use.

Flagstaff has suffered 3 huge floods this year. Where does that water go?

[NickB79]

20. Phoenix runoff goes to the Salt River

And that is impounded by several dams and irrigation projects per Wikipedia.

https://www.phoenix.gov/waterservices/envservices/stormwater-program/faqs

[2naSalit]

12. Teachable moment?

[Bettie]

13. Maybe trying to live in a desert as if it is a temperate zone

is short-sighted?

Aside from the compact, taking water from the Great Lakes at the level it would take to ensure the level of water all of those desert southwest states use would be seriously damaging to the great lakes and the states around them.

[Chainfire]

14. If you overcame the engineering and treaty difficulties

and piped a gazillion gallons a day into the desert it would just cause more wastage and result in a growing population. It is not a water problem it is a people problem. People need incentives to leave the deserts not excuses to stay and grow. You know, there is a reason it is called Arizona...

[Bettie]

16. Precisely

Lawns, pools, golf courses...these are not really desert things.

Taking water from the Great Lakes is foolish, both in regard to the logistics and the encouragement of population growth in deserts.

[Chainfire]

17. Can you imagine if 20 million people were dependent upon a pipeline for their drinking water

what a security issue that would be?

[Bettie]

18. Yes, I can and it would be

a BIG target.

Plus, think of how many people are in each of the states affected. There would be demands to keep lakes filled and the rivers high.

The Great Lakes would be depleted far faster than people think with the insatiable demand for more from the deserts.

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-environment-watch/how-long-can-great-lakes-fend-thirsty-world-water-diversions

The lake in the first sentence is Lake Superior.

The power and immensity of the lake seems immutable. If there is anything in nature that will withstand the passing of time, this inland ocean would seem a likely candidate.

Peter Annin knows better. The author of “The Great Lakes Water Wars,” which examines the fight to protect the lakes from an encroaching and increasingly water-starved world, has stood in the dry ocean bed of Central Asia’s Aral Sea and reflected upon the fragility of such seemingly infinite resources. The Aral was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world. But the Soviet diversion of Aral water in the 1950s to grow crops dried up 90 percent of the lake in the span of a generation.

“Standing in the middle of the seafloor in a place where the water was once 45 feet deep, the magnitude of the disaster can be difficult to grasp — nothing but sand stretches off to the horizon in all directions,” Annin wrote in his book. “Photos cannot capture the true extent of this ecological calamity; it even challenges the bounds of the written word.”

At least partly because of the lesson learned from the fate of the Aral Sea, withdrawals from Lake Superior and its four sister lakes are regulated by a hard-won eight-state protective agreement called the Great Lakes Compact and a companion document that provides oversight in Ontario and Quebec.

[NickB79]

19. And as the climate warms, evaporation rates go up

We're at 1C now. We'll blow through 2C in 25 years. 3C in 50 years.

The hotter it gets, the less rain falls, and the faster water evaporates. Couple that with a growing population, and by century's end you'll be pumping far more than that 1 billion gallons per day the OP posited.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

15. Bingo, golf courses, green lawns and swimming pools in the desert, just what everyone needs