As recently as 2021, the Arizona state legislature urged Congress to fund a technological and feasibility study of a diversion dam and pipeline scheme to harvest floodwater from the Mississippi River to replenish the Colorado River. But if areas like the Coachella Valley continue to approve surf waveparks and "beachfront" developments in the desert, "we're screwed," he said bluntly. Specifically, start with a line from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River at Lake Powell, where a seven-state compact divvies up the water. States wish they wouldnt. What goes into the cat-and-mouse game of forecasting Colorados avalanche risks? But the idea hasnever completely died. Precedents set by other diversion attempts, like those that created the Great Lakes Compact, also cast doubt over the political viability of any large-scale Mississippi River diversion attempt, said Chloe Wardropper, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor researching environmental governance. As western states grew over the twentieth century, the federal government helped them build several massive water diversion projects that would hydrate their growing urban populations: The Central Arizona Project aqueduct brought water from the Colorado River to Phoenix, for instance, and the Big Thompson system piped water across the Colorado Rockies to Denver. A multi-state compact already prohibits any sale of water from the Great Lakes unless all bordering states agree to it, and its almost certain that Mississippi River states would pass laws restricting water diversions, or file lawsuits against western states, if the project went forward. Haul icebergs from the Arctic to a new southern California port. Famiglietti said as long as urban areas in the West don't persist in untrammeled growth, they have enough supply for the immediate future, with the ability to rip out lawns, capture stormwater runoff in local reservoirs, do municipal audits to fix leaks and other tools. The idea of diverting water from the Mississippi to the Colorado River basin is an excellent one, albeit also fantastically expensive. Were not looking for the last dollar out of this project, he told me. Tina Peters convicted of government obstruction charge, acquitted of obstructing a police officer, (720) 263-2338 Call, text, Signal or WhatsApp, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. An acre-foot is enough water to serve about two households for a year, so it could supply water to 150 million customers. Arizona, which holds "junior"rights to Colorado River water, meaning it has already been forced to make cuts and might be legally required to make far larger reductions, wants to build a bi-national desalination plant at the Sea of Cortez, which separates Baja California from the Mexican mainland. To be talking about pipe dreams, when thats not even feasible for decades, if at all Its a disservice, Scanlan said. Its largestdam would be 1,700 feet tall, more than twice the height of Hoover Dam. It dawned on Million that Colorado had unclaimed rights to water from the Green, since the river was part of the Colorado River system, and he devised a plan to build a pipeline that would pump water around the Rockies to the city of Fort Collins, where he lives. Take that, Lake Mead. You tellgolf courses how much water they can use, but one of thelargest wave basins in the world is acceptable? Siphon off a big portion, and youd be swapping oneecological catastrophe for another, said Audubons Johnson. As a resident of Wisconsin, a state that borders the (Mississippi) river, let me say: This is never gonna happen, wrote Margaret Melville of Cedarburg, Wisconsin. What states in the Southwest have failed to do is curtail growth and agriculture that is, of course, water-driven. The mountains are green now but that could be harmful during wildfire season. But there are tons of things that can be done but arent ever done.. A multi-state pipeline could easily require decades before it delivers a drop of water," said Michael Cohen, senior researcher with the Pacific Institute. Proponents of these projects argue that they could stabilize western cities for decades to come, connecting populations with unclaimed water rights. Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where its used for coastal restoration. So come on out for the plastic Marilyn on our dashboard, and stay for the stupendous waste of water, electricity and clean air. Precedents set by other diversion attempts, like those that created the Great Lakes Compact, also cast doubt over the political viability of any large-scale Mississippi River diversion attempt, said Chloe Wardropper, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor researching environmental governance. and Renstrom says that unless Utah builds a long-promised pipeline to pump water 140 miles from Lake . Officials imposed the state's first-ever water restrictions on cities and towns, and California farmers are drilling deeper and . One proposed solution to the Colorado River Basin's water scarcity crisis has come up again and again: large-scale river diversions, including pumping Mississippi River water to the parched West . States have [historically] been very successful in getting the federal government to pay for wasteful, unsustainable, large water projects, said Denise Fort, a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico who has studied water infrastructure. The idea of drinking even heavily treated liquid wastemay seem unpalatable, but Westfordthinks people will adapt. Their detractors counter that, in an era of permanent aridification driven by climate change, the only sustainable solution is not to bring in more water, but to consume less of it. The water, more than 44 million gallons a day, would come from 115 wells drilled between 1,000 and 5,000 feet deep in Beryl-Enterprise, a basin where the state has restricted use of shallow groundwater due to over-extraction. Seeking answers,The Desert Sun consultedwater experts, conservation groups and government officials for their assessments. It would turn the Southwest into an oasis, and the Great Basin into productive farmland. Other forms of augmentation, like desalination, are also gaining popularity on the national scene as possible options. Butbig water infrastructure projects aren't just of interest to the general public. But water expertssaid it would likely take at least 30 years to clear legal hurdles to such a plan. after the growth in California . They also concluded environmental and permitting reviews would take decades. Arizona state legislators asked Congress to consider a pipeline that dumps Mississippi water into the Green River, but there are alternate possibilities. All three officials said the construction of a45-mile Delta Water Project tunnel to keep supply flowing from the middle of the state to thirsty cities in the south isvital. Well, kind of, Letters to the Editor: Shasta County dumps Dominion voting machines at its own peril, Editorial: Bay Area making climate change history by phasing out sales of gas furnaces and water heaters, Column: Mike Lindell is helping a California county dump voting machines. Snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada Mountains have swelled to more than 200% their normal size, and snowfall across the rest of the Colorado River Basin is trending above average, too. About 60% of the region remains in some form of drought, continuing a decades-long spiral into water scarcity. Instagram, Follow us on In fact, she and others noted, many such ideas have been studied since the 1940s. There are at least half a dozen major water pipeline projects under consideration throughout the region, ranging from ambitious to outlandish. The massive river, with tributaries from Montanato Ohio, is a national artery for shipping goodsout to sea. Drought conditions plagued the region throughout 2022, for instance, prompting concerns over river navigation. Politics are an even bigger obstacle to making multi-state pipelines a reality. Page Contact Information: Missouri Water Data Support Team Page Last Modified: 2023-03-04 08:46:14 EST . The water would be drained via a 36 inch pipe already installed four miles west of Sugarloaf Mountain outside Marquette. Heproposed usingnuclear explosionsto excavate the system's trenches and underground water storage reservoirs. The 800-mile system of pipelines, ditches and reservoirs would cost an estimated $23 billion and could provide 1 million acre-feet of water a year to Colorado. He frames the pipeline as a complement to water-saving policies. Parsons said theplanwould replenishthe upper Missouri and Mississippi Rivers during dry spells, increase hydropower along the Columbia Riverand stabilize the Great Lakes. The Colorado River is drying up. Mississippi River drought will impact your grocery bill. But interest spans deeper than that. The plan would divert water from the Missouri River which normally flows into the Mississippi River and out to the Gulf of Mexico through an enormous pipeline slicing some 600 miles (970 . Noting about 4.5 million gallons per second of Mississippi River flow past the Old River Control Structure in Louisiana, the letter writer explains diverting 250,000 gallons per second would. As part of our commitment to sustainability, in 2021 Grist moved its office headquarters to the Bullitt Center in Seattles vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood. Local hurdles include endangered species protections, wetlands protections, drinking water supply considerations and interstate shipping protections. Additionally, building large infrastructure projects in general has become more difficult, in part thanks to reforms like the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires that detailed environmental impact statements be produced and evaluated for large new infrastructure projects. If this gets any traction at all, people in the flyover states of the Missouri River basin probably will scream, one water official told the New York Times when the project first received attention. The conceptsfell into a few large categories: pipe Mississippi or Missouri River water to the eastern sideof the Rockies or to Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, bring icebergs in bags, on container ships or via trucks to Southern California, pump water from the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest to California via a subterranean pipeline on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, or replenish the headwaters of the Green River, the main stem of the Colorado River, with water from tributaries. The federal Water Conservation Bureau gave approval Tuesday to piping 440 billion gallons of water per month to Arizona. Despite the recent defeat of a major plant in Huntington Beach, after the California Coastal Commission said it was too environmentally damaging, "ocean desalination can't be off the table," said Coffey. Absolutely not," said Meena Westford, executive director of Colorado River resource policy for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. YouTube, Follow us on The other alternatives have political costs, and they have costs that are maybe more likely to be borne locally, including by farmers and other large water users, she said. Diverting that water also means spreading problems, like pollutants, excessive nutrients, and invasive species. Two hundred miles north of New Orleans, in the heart of swampy Cajun country, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1963 cut a rogue arm of the Mississippi River in half with giant levees to keep the main river intact and flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. Is this a goo. This is the country that built the Hoover Dam, and where Los Angeles suburbs were created by taking water from Owens Lake. Under the analyzed scenario, water would be conveyed to Colorados Front Range and areas of New Mexico to help fulfill water needs. ", Westford of Southern California's Metropolitan Water District agreed. Similar ideas have been suggested about Great Lakes water. A Mississippi pipeline to Lake Powell would need to cut across four states, he and Johnson said, including hundreds of miles of wetlands in Louisiana and west Texas. Then take it out of the southern tip of the aquifer in Southern Colorado. For instance, a Kansas groundwater management agency received a permit last year to truck 6,000 gallons of Missouri River water into Kansas and Colorado in hopes of recharging an aquifer. There are no easy fixes to a West that has grown and has allocated all of its water theres no silver bullet, she said. It boggles the mind. No one wants to leave the western states without water, said Melissa Scanlan, a freshwater sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. California Departmentof Water Resourcesspokeswoman Maggie Maciasin an email: In considering the feasibility of a multi-state water conveyance infrastructure, the extraordinary costs that would be involved in planning, designing, permitting, constructing, and then maintaining and operating such a vast system of infrastructure would be significant obstacles when compared to the water supply benefits and flood water reduction benefits that it would provide. Arizonas main active management areas are in Maricopa, Pinal, Pima, and Santa Cruz counties, leaving much of rural Arizona water use unregulated. The actual costs to build such a pipeline today would likely be orders of magnitude higher, thanks to inflation and inevitable construction snags. Any water diversion from the Mississippi to Arizona must be pumped about 6,000 feet up, over the Rockies. This latest version would curve up through the Wyoming flatlands and back down to Fort Collins, a distance of around 340 miles. By Brittney J. Miller, The Cedar Rapids Gazette. Among its provisions, the law granted the states water infrastructure finance authority to investigate the feasibility of potential out-of-state water import agreements. Most recently, the Arizona state legislature passed a measure in 2021 urging Congress to investigate pumping flood water from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River to bolster its. The only newsroom focused on exploring solutions at the intersection of climate and justice. PROVISIONAL DATA SUBJECT TO REVISION. We have to conserve water, butnota ridiculous wave parkthat willprobably go bankrupt? The idea is as old and dusty as the desert Southwest: Pipe abundant Great Lakes water to parched cities out West, such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. [1] Facebook, Follow us on Yet some smaller-scale projects have become reality. Doug Ducey signed legislation this past July that invested $1.2 billion to fund projects that conserve water and bring more into the state. The main pipeline would span about 1,000 miles from Jackson, Miss., along the southern borders of Colorado and Utah to Lake Powell, at an elevation of about 3,700 feet. Known as one of the greenest commercial buildings in the world, since it opened its doors on Earth Day in 2013 the Bullitt Center has been setting a new standard for sustainable design. Water use has gone down 40% per capita in recent years, said Coffey. A federal report from a decade ago pegged an optimistic cost estimate for a similar pipeline at $14 billion and said the project would take 30 years to build; a Colorado rancher who championed the idea around the same time, meanwhile, estimated its costs at $23 billion. Twitter, Follow us on Historian Ted Steinberg said itsummed up "the sheer arrogance and imperial ambitions of the modern hydraulic West.". In 1964, a California engineering company proposed diverting flows from the Yukon and Mackenzie River watersheds, shared by Canada and the U.S., all the way to southern California and into Mexico. Its possible that the situation gets so dire that there is an amount of money out there that could overcome all of these obstacles, Larson said. Under the analyzed scenario, water would be conveyed to Colorados Front Range and areas of New Mexico to help fulfill water needs. But, as water scarcity in the West gets more desperate, the hurdles could be overcome one day. "I think that societally, we want to be more flexible. Why are they so hard to catch? Even if the government could clear these hurdles, the odds that Midwestern states would just let their water go are slim. The total projected cost of the plan in 1975 was $100 billion or nearly $570billion in today's dollars,comparable to theInterstate Highway System. Yet their persistence in the public sphere illustrates the growing desperation of Western states to dig themselves out of droughts. The diverted flow would require massive water tunnels, since a flow of 250,000. Facebook, Follow us on She and others worked to persuade reluctant consumers, builders and policymakers to ditchwidely usedsix-gallon flush toilets in favor of perfectly effective two-gallon versions. The Western U.S. is experiencing its driest period in more than a thousand years, according to scientists from UCLA and Columbia University. It is a minimum of 1,067 miles from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River if it could be built in a fairly straight line (St. Louis to Grand Junction, Colorado, based on the route of. To the editor: The states near the Gulf of Mexico are often flooded with too much water, while the Southwest is suffering a long-term drought. Makes me wonder how this got this far, whose interests are being served and who's benefiting. Most notably, the Mississippi River basin doesnt always have enough water to spare. We are already in a severe drought. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); A nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Here in the scorching Coachella Valley, local governments have approved construction of four surf resorts for the very wealthy. In 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interiors Bureau of Reclamation completed the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken within the Colorado River Basin at the time, which analyzed solutions to water supply issues including importing water from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), FILE - Dredge Jadwin, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging vessel, powers south down the Mississippi River Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022, past Commerce, Mo. Widespread interest in the plan eventually fizzled. Follow us on He said hes open to one but doesnt think its necessary. Here's How. And several approved diversions draw water from the Great Lakes. We've had relatively rich resources for so long,we've never really had to deal withthis before, andwe don't want to change.". . The driver of the truck was not injured. Its one of dozens of letters the paperhas received proposing or vehemently opposing schemes to fix the crashing Colorado River system, which provides water to nearly 40 million people and farms in seven western states. Major projects to restore the coast and save brown pelicans and other endangered species are now underway, and Mississippi sediment delivery is at the heart of them. LAS VEGAS -- Lake Mead has nearly set a new record when its water level measured at 1081.10 feet, according to the Bureau of Reclamation. The river's web, if some have their way, could become even larger. All rights reserved. In the meantime, researchers encourage more feasible and sustainable options, including better water conservation, water recycling, and less agricultural reliance. That project, which also faces heavy headwinds from environmentalists, wouldcost an estimated $12 billion. Why it's a longshot: First, to get across the Continental Divide and into the Colorado River, you'd need an uphill pipeline about 1,000 miles long, which is longer than any other drinking water . And biologists andenvironmental attorneys saidNew Orleans and the Louisiana coast, along with the interior swamplands, need every drop of muddy Mississippi water. All rights reserved. This would take 254 days to fill.. Subscribe today to see what all the buzz is about. Posted on: February 7, 2023, 02:30h. It was the Bureau of Reclamation. California uses 34 million acre-feet of water per year for agriculture. Either way, most of these projects stand little chance of becoming reality theyre ideas from a bygone era, one that has more in common with the world of Chinatown than the parched west of the present. Trans-national pipelines would also impact ecological resources. But pipelines and other big ideaswill always attract interest, hydrology experts said, because they falsely promise an innovative, easy way out. Since about 1983, Lake Mead has dropped in volume from full capacity at. If you dont have enough of it, go find more. For decades, key stewards of the river have ignored the massive water loss, instead allocating Arizona, California, Nevada and Mexico their share of the river without subtracting whats evaporated. Pitt, who was a technical adviser on Reclamation's2012 report,decried ceaselesspipeline proposals. Environmental writerMarc Reisner said the plan was one of "brutal magnificence" and "unprecedented destructiveness." If a portion of the farmers in the region were to change crops or fallow their fields, the freed-up water could sustain growing cities. Each year worsens our receipt of rain and snow. As an engineer, I can guarantee you that it is doable, Viadero said. Million sued, and he says he expects a ruling this year. No one wants to leave the western states without water, said Melissa Scanlan, a freshwater sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where it's used for coastal restoration. Twitter, Follow us on Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where its used for coastal restoration. One benefit would be flood control for the Eastern USA . This aerial photo of Davenport, Iowa, shows Mississippi River floodwaters in May 2019. Famiglietti saidit's time for a national water policy, not to figure out where to lay down hundreds of pipesbut to look comprehensively at the intertwining of agriculture and the lion's share ofwater it uses.

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