ELi5: Why can’t we build a giant water pipeline across the US? I live in north east US and we get an insane amount of precipitation. Can’t we help out the west by moving some of that to them?
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At one point this summer, every county in CT was in level 2 drought conditions, some were getting close to level 3. Just because you have precipitation does not mean the entire area has it.
how do you propose we get that water over the rocky mountains? that’s be bat shit crazy expensive and generally not worth it. while sure, there are “droughts” it’s not like they are entirely out of water, there’s already water pipeline networks in place to get the water there. the west already gets a lot of water from the northwest. that pipeline already exists.
really short answer? Water is heavy.
It takes a TON of energy to move that much mass around, especially over or through the mountains, and we use water at a rate which absolutely dwarfs petroleum products where we’ve used pipelines for efficient movement in the past. It also doesn’t generate nearly as much revenue at the point of consumption so moving it doesn’t pay for itself the way it does with petroleum products.
Moving water is a major project and while it’s doable if you can let gravity do the work from high altitude areas to low, it’s mostly not practical in any sense if you have to move it long distances without gravity on your side or especially AGAINST gravity. A short run to a water tower is fine, but you’re not going over mountains with a significant quantity of water.
It’s a matter of scale. Water consumption is incredibly high, and trying to transport the amount of water needed to make any noticeable impact would require a monumental cost.
It is expensive to pump water uphill. And the Rocky Mountains are big hills.
CA already spends an enormous amount of money moving water around. In fact, according to the state‘s own government, the State Water Project is California’s single largest purchaser of electricity (needed for pumping water uphill even though they also generate power when that same water runs downhill). Source: https://water.ca.gov/What-We-Do/Power
Besides the technical answers, the best reason is because we dont want to encourage their already wasteful behavior. Stop depleting aquifers to grow crops that don’t belong in your biome.
Just to add to some of the answers you already have:
* No one with water wants to send it out. The great lakes already locked their water out from export. Other places will probably follow if there seems to be serious interest.
* What will happen if they get more water is that they will immediately increase consumption and just end up in the same position again, all the while your water levels will just go down. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Tulare lake, which was the largest lake west of the mississippi river until CA basically drained it for crops.
* The scale needed is massive. You don’t need a Keystone XL pipeline: you need hundreds of them.
* We already have experience with this from things like the Aral sea. It’s not going to end well.
* The problem has always been overconsumption and waste. They literally flood fields with water to grow alfalfa to send it out to Saudi Arabia. This is entirely a self-made problem that is on them to fix.
Because really huge is way bigger than you are thinking. The pipe that supplies PART of New York City’s drinking water is 24 feet in diameter.
California would need a really big pipe.
Also, while there are closer sources for water (I suspect the lower Klamath river has extra water) there is also the risk of building huge infrastructure over decades, only for the precipitation patterns to shift
You’re talking about making a full size manmade river, at a minimum
One to rival the colorado river at least, since we basically drain that dry with the current water needs of the southwest.
Thats… not going to happen.
You can. It’s just a really dumb idea. It’s far cheaper and simpler to just change water conservation habits. The vast majority of water use is by agriculture, and agriculture does not give a flying fuck about piped water because it’ll cost them hundreds to thousands of times more than what they pay now, which they will never ever pay. They’ll just move somewhere else where water is far cheaper.
The average person is the only group of people willing to pay more for water, but they have very little impact on water shortages in the first place.
So there’s no point in piping it. The people who use most of it don’t want it (crop and animal farms), and the average people living in homes and apartments don’t need it in the first place. There’s more than enough water as it is. You just have to tell the farmers to take a hike.
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