Every year the east side of the country seems to have historic flooding, meanwhile there is always historic drought out west.
Why can’t we just build a pipeline to pump flood zones to drought zones?
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Because the amlount of water to move is incredibly large.
You’d have to create a continent sized river rivaling the Mississippi to manage that.
Economically the flood water is very spread out and there is no way to really pipe it away. It would be far easier to set up a desalination plant and have it pump water but even then the amount of water required would cost more than the drought land could produce.
Expense.
We build pipelines for oil because oil sells for nearly $2 a gallon (~$.50 a liter). If you ever check your water bill, you’re paying a tiny fraction of that price, which means that pipeline water would be uncompetitive or unaffordable by the consumer. To make it competitive, that would need to be subsidized; at the rates that the average consumer uses water on a daily basis, the expense of that subsidy would be massive. It would be a very hard sell for any government to their people. Additionally, if you’re relying on floodwater as a source, it will be seasonally idle, meaning your huge investment is doing nothing for large chunks of the year.
This is ignoring the physical logistics of the challenge: multiple pipelines to meet demand, collection and pumping stations, water treatment facilities because water runoff isn’t immediately safe to drink.
We can build pipelines for water. There are two major issues, depending on the exact situation:
1. Flooding – Not feasible. If you are referring to pumping flood water away, the volume of water needing to be pumped is impossibly large and it is impossible to predict when it would be available to be pumped. Drought zones would need predictable supplies. Even if it could be pumped, the size of the storage tanks needed to hold that much water to make supplies of flood water available when needed would be on the scale of cities.
2. Fresh Water – Control and Access. If you are referring to simply being able to pump fresh water from areas that have it (like the Great Lakes areas) to drought areas), those areas that have water do not want to part with it. They realize how valuable a resource fresh water is. The states around the Great Lakes even have a formal agreement (the Great Lakes Water Compact – [https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WaterUse/Compact.html](https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WaterUse/Compact.html)) that governs how that resource is managed. Those states also have an international agreement with the provinces in Canada (the Great Lakes St. Lawrence River Basis Sustainable Water Resources Agreement – [https://www.ontario.ca/page/great-lakes-st-lawrence-river-basin-sustainable-water-resources-agreement-0](https://www.ontario.ca/page/great-lakes-st-lawrence-river-basin-sustainable-water-resources-agreement-0)) that border the Great Lakes for the same purpose.
Economically the flood water is very spread out and there is no way to really pipe it away. It would be far easier to set up a desalination plant and have it pump water but even then the amount of water required would cost more than the drought land could produce.
Because the amlount of water to move is incredibly large.
You’d have to create a continent sized river rivaling the Mississippi to manage that.
Because the amlount of water to move is incredibly large.
You’d have to create a continent sized river rivaling the Mississippi to manage that.
Expense.
We build pipelines for oil because oil sells for nearly $2 a gallon (~$.50 a liter). If you ever check your water bill, you’re paying a tiny fraction of that price, which means that pipeline water would be uncompetitive or unaffordable by the consumer. To make it competitive, that would need to be subsidized; at the rates that the average consumer uses water on a daily basis, the expense of that subsidy would be massive. It would be a very hard sell for any government to their people. Additionally, if you’re relying on floodwater as a source, it will be seasonally idle, meaning your huge investment is doing nothing for large chunks of the year.
This is ignoring the physical logistics of the challenge: multiple pipelines to meet demand, collection and pumping stations, water treatment facilities because water runoff isn’t immediately safe to drink.
Physically there are two fundamental problems.
a) Water is very heavy
b) We use a lot of water
The truth is that well before you reach the west coast, there are already significant problems in the mid-West. The US agricultural system in that area is fairly rapidly draining the aquifers in the region. So there is more than enough demand for an inexpensive, regular, sustainable water source without going to the West coast.
For it to even start making sense, it has to be regular. And that means relying on flood waters is not going to work. Then to hold on to the water, there needs to be more dams and massive reservoirs along the way to hold on to the water.
Once the water is collected (assuming that all these dams and new reservoirs are even built) there is the problem of moving it. Water is heavy and we use so much that moving it would cost a great amount of energy and infrastructure. A few pipes won’t do since it probably works out to tens of billions of cubic meters of water a year. (basically a major river’s worth – the Colorado’s flow is around 20 billion cubic meters annually)
For the West Coast there is another big problem and that is the Rocky Mountains. Any water from the East to the West would need to be elevated by at least a mile or two to get across. It could take as much as 5% of the current total electricity consumption of the US just to do this. (US annual electricity consumption about 4000 TwH, just raising 20 billion cubic meters of water by 3000 meters would take around 6 TWh and there hasn’t been pumping and efficiency losses taken into account)
Economically the flood water is very spread out and there is no way to really pipe it away. It would be far easier to set up a desalination plant and have it pump water but even then the amount of water required would cost more than the drought land could produce.
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