ELi5 Why can’t we build massive transnational water pipelines (like with oil) to transport water from large fresh water sources to drier areas?

Question

Obviously this wouldn’t relieve the issues caused by low snowpack and decreasing precipitation, but it could supplement the water used for everyday living or agriculture during times of drought right?

In: 6

Answer 1

This was considered in the early 60’s it was called the North America Water and Power Alliance (NWAPA). For starters, the project would have been *Extremely* detrimental to the environmental landscape and the marginal gain of water transferrence was not enough to justify that scale of environmental damage. Yes, this is done with oil lines, but a project like this requires tons of dams and connections to multiple bodies of freshwater and would be much more intricate.

Second, the cost adjusted for inflation would be nearly 2 Trillion dollars just to complete the project. That doesn’t even include the cost and nightmare logistics of maintaining something of that magnitude across multiple state (and in this case country) borders.