1700 miles of landowner lawsuits; and one endangered insect will stop any progress until enormous amounts of money and time are spent to make sure we comply with every current environmental regulation. By the time that’s done the South West will be long gone.
Years ago when the Mississippi River flooded causing all kinds of damage, all we heard from Californians was how stupid the Midwest folks were to live so close to rivers and now we can say the same. How stupid is it to develop cities in a desert and have to beg for water.
Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
231–240 of 347 posts
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint: I grew up in the Midwest along the Kankakee river, and most infrastructure is built for flooding, as it can happen year round. Fresh water is not only abundant, there is often too much, and flooded fields and towns are a real problem. I am all for finding ways to move it west where people say they need it and are willing to pay a premium. Cities in the deserts of earth are more feasible than ever with i…
The great lakes watershed can't be touched. In any case, the solution to floods in a flood plain is to not live in a flood plain or build elevated structures.
Only because of a treaty. If there was monetary compensation for the water I think you would get the states and provinces on board in a hurry.
I’d be more concerned about the insane water rights problems being shoved upstream to people in the great lakes basins.
Telling me I can’t collect rain water to water my garden so somebody who lives in a dessert 2,000 miles away can be guaranteed the ability to water their lawn is insanity.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Average US housing has 3x the floor space and land space as a British house. The Brits are very poor by US standards.
Yes, but the average US house is basically in the middle of the countryside by British standards, that's the difference. We could say Americans are very poor by British standards since they can't live near shops, work, etc. If you want to live an hour outside the city and drive everywhere, you can rent a 3-bedroom detached house of a similar size as a US house reasonably easily, for about the same price. The differen…
> If you want to live an hour outside the city and drive everywhere, you can rent a 3-bedroom detached house of a similar size as a US house reasonably easily, for about the same price.
Nonesense. I just checked on rightmove for a three bed in Wallingford (a tiny town in central England a km across that consists entirely of suburbs and is an hour's drive from the edge of London). It's about 30% smaller than the average US residence while costing just under a million dollars.
Heck, Ramsey is in the middle of bloody nowhere and its still >$400k for a three bed half the size of what you can get inside Chicago city for the same price.
Brits struggle to comprehend just how much worse off we are than the Americans. Similar housing (similar type of location etc) costs 3x-6x as much despite Brits earning less.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#234Most water use is for agriculture. Most agricultural water use is for meat. Beef is by far the least efficient way to turn water (and other stuff) into protein. I propose we tax meat nationwide according to its water use, instead of dreaming up unrealistic and unnecessary megaprojects.
Cows are actually extremely efficient at turning water into calories. Almonds, alfalfa, and soy consume 2.5 orders of magnitude more water to generate an equivalent amount of calories as a cow.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#235Sad that not reading the article before commenting has so obviously come to hacker news. So many comments on here moaning about harming the east to give to a greedy west when what something like this would almost certainly do is help the east flood less while helping the west at least partly solve a water shortage. The concerns about contamination are real but probably manageable though.
Perhaps HN should ban paywalled articles? I cannot read this article.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#236Counter-proposal: Time for people to investigate moving East.
The cure sounds worse than the disease.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#237I'm from New Orleans. The author is dead wrong. The city of New Orleans gets its drinking water from the Mississippi. And the city of New Orleans is the biggest port in the hemisphere based on Mississippi River traffic which is it's economy.
Anyway, I highly doubt the modern US government has the capability to build a thousand miles of pipeline over the continental divide.
Although it would be interesting to have California dependent on red states.
A better solution is to just do nuclear desalination from the ocean like the Arabs do.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#238As someone who moved to LA in the early 70s, and left LA in the late 80s, and spent some time to visit Palm Springs, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, I can say with full confidence that anyone with a lick of sense knew there was not enough water to sustain that growth that started back then, but that didn't stop anyone from building or buying those homes. They all knew it, but didn't care. It was, and still is, plain old stup…
> The only reasonable solution is to stop building new homes right now, and look into how to reduce the number that exists because it's obvious they've already overbuilt. Yep, reduce housing, don’t build more. Nobody wants to admit it because it doesn’t sound nice.
Don't build more in deserts.
It sounds crazy that we're even talking about this.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've lived and traveled in Califoria and the west but have you tried to grow anything here? There's a reason we've built vast megaprojects to pump water around the West: our deserts have been the terminus for the biological nutrient cycle for millions of years through multiple climate cycles resulting in an incredibly fertile ecosystem, despite its desolate appearance. Combined with the heat, it creates the perfect…
I don't think California is more fertile than the Midwest on a soil-analysis basis. The nearly double growing season is what is the game changer.
I think the Southeast will happily take over this nearly double growing season, with their climate.
Let the desert return to being a desert.
Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?
#240Let's compare daily average household domestic water consumption: - where I live: 202l [0] - US: >1135l [1] US household consumption share of total water usage: 12% [1]. Just reducing household usage to 50% more than a random wealthy northwestern European region instead of 560%(!) more equals 10% total water usage savings. That's without even touching agriculture or other water hungry sectors. Aligning usage to be a…
> - We only have one earth. It's _ours_ you know, not just yours. And our children's. And our children's children's..." This makes no sense as a response. Water usage is a local issue where water goes through X rather than Y. Water usage in Pakistan has zero effect on Germany, unlike CO2 emmissions. If an entire river got diverted to lawns then the effects would only be between the divert point and the sea (in the fo…
> Water usage is a local issue where water goes through X rather than Y. Water usage in Pakistan has zero effect on Germany, unlike CO2 emmissions.
Not entirely accurate:
> The virtual water trade (also known as embedded or embodied water) is the hidden flow of water in food or other commodities that are traded from one place to another.[1] The virtual water trade is the idea that when goods and services are exchanged, so is virtual water.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_water
A concrete example from another comment:
> With the Saudi Arabian landscape there being mostly desert and alfalfa being a water-intensive crop, growing it there has always been expensive and draining on scarce water resources, to the point that the Saudi government finally outlawed the practice in 2016. In the wake of the ban, Almarai decided to purchase land wherever it is cheap and has favorable water conditions to produce enough feed for its 93,000 cows.
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/25/california-w...