Water Wars - Mexico

They already have some industrial looking areas on the coast - Oxnard.
I was out there in S. Cal on vacation this summer and they were asking people to "Please only water your yard once a week to save water". How about don't water your yard at all and do all landscaping like they do in Vegas or Phoenix.

 

Pardon my ignorance on the subject, but if the needed water is in the Mississippi River, why can't California's agriculture move there? Is the soil terrible in the relevant states, or is there not enough acreage?

 

I think its a combination of soil quality and year-round weather. Southern California has excellent weather year-round, while the lower Mississippi valley gets winter freezes. There is plenty of farming that goes on in the areas around the Mississippi River, but a lot of it is smaller-plant crops, like soybeans and cotton, that can be plowed under every year. California grows a lot of high-value crops on trees, like almonds and cashews and oranges. Those trees can't survive winter freezes, and don't get plowed under every year. The heavier rains in the southeast probably also wash out a lot of the nutrients from the soil, making the task of maintaining soil quality more difficult. Irrigation in California can be better controlled to limit the removal of nutrients. There may be more to it than that, but I think that's a big part of it.

 

I believe it's not just the soil quality (characteristics) which is an issue but also the temperature and humidity that is also an issue for fruits and nuts that they grow out there.

 

Thanks for the replies. I understand that California's clement weather has been ideal for crops in the past, but if warming and drought continues, that may cease to be the case. Time to get creative with alternatives, or do without.

 

I don't think that a series of locks is necessary. Locks are just pumps that move water between tubs of water at different heights that have a gate at each end. They are for moving ships uphill (or downhill). For a ship to go uphill, you pump in water around the ship; to go downhill, you pump out water. Here, you just want to pump water uphill, so that can be done most affordably with a pipe and a pump.

 

I think you meant the 'headwaters' of the Colorado, La Poudre Pass Lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park. The lake's altitude is 10,174 feet. It flows south out of the park through Grand Lake and Lake Granby, where the first of many diversions begin.

A bit of trivia on the Colorado River. It was originally called the Grand River in this state. The 3 lakes mentioned are all in Grand County. After the river leaves the state of Colorado it merges with Wyoming's Green River in southeast Utah. From this merger point south the river has always been called the Colorado, but until 1921 it was known in this state as the Grand River.

The waters of the Gunnison River merge with those of the Grand/Colorado here in Grand Junction about 3 miles from our home. Grand Junction is located in a valley, known as the Grand Valley, formed by the proximity of the Grand Mesa (largest mesa on planet Earth), the Bookcliff Range, and the Colorado National Monument.

 

To add: Denver, east of the continental divide diverts and pumps water from Lake Granby for use in the city, and wants authorization to divert more for its increasing demands.

And in actuality there is no longer a 'mouth' for the Colorado as the unholy demands made on the river have reduced it to a trickle, drying to nothing in the Sonoran Desert miles from the Gulf of California.

 

Why don’t we let Mother Nature take her course and change as nature does?

When you take water from somewhere There’s almost always a negative effect. The amount of water Cali needs will hurt someone else.

 

Yeah and by the time they managed to swipe water from somewhere else, it'll be way too late. If I lived out there, I'd at least have have a rainwater cistern system installed ASAP.

 

It doesn't rain enough to fill it!

 

Someone wrote in to the paper (wasn't me) arguing how foolish this guy's idea is.

Moving water from the Mississippi River to west would require massive and expensive pumps

Edmonston Pumping Plant - Wikipedia

 

More input from the Dutch:

Americans went to the moon. Surely they can move water from Mississippi River to the West

The trip to the moon cost billions, and added trillions to the economy. The gigantic water hose to California would cost trillions, and add billions to the economy. Are the Dutch people mathematically-challenged, or do they not understand business?

The Dutch do a good job of keeping excess water out of their cities. But where do they ship all of this excess water? I'm sure someone in Europe would like some more water. When the Dutch ship all the water from the Atlantic Ocean that they keep out of their cities (in a 66'-pipe) to some other location (preferably over the Alps) that has a use for it, then they should tell us all about it.

 

Mostly because “nature running its course” will mean economic calamity for the U.S.A. with entire towns and productive agriculture totally wiped out.

Granted, it’s a two pronged issue. Developing areas that never should have been developed in the first place, and climate change leading to this mega drought. It’s rational to look at a top level and say “the areas that never should have been developed” should be let go and allowed to run dry (and indeed there are surely areas where nothing can be done, the land will be desert). The problem is you can’t just let that happen everywhere across the west due to the economic devastation that will result. It’s a substantial part of our national GDP at risk.

 

I think the answer is to gradually ratchet up the price of water and let the farmers decide if they want to pay for the water or pack up and move. Maybe some crops (like alfalfa) are not worth spending the money to keep watered. Some residents may decide that they do not want to live in a state where the water is so expensive. Right now, they are not making the hard choices that they need to make.

BTW, this is what 75,000 gal/sec looks like (30% of the required 250,000 gal/sec. This is a 300'-tall dam (Croton Dam, tallest in the world in 1906) in New York state after a hurricane (Ida) came through last year. That's about how big the aqueduct would have to be to bring 250,000 gal/sec of water to California. And this is at ground level--the aqueduct would have to be raised up a half mile or more to get it to California.

 

What’s going on in Salt Lake City and the Great Salt Lake is mind boggling insane. Drying up lake, dust clouds or toxic dust, lack of snow for the mountains. Good Lord the R politicians are idiots — do they not realize they are going to be killing off their constituents??