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Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

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Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#271

Post by ianai »

oblib wrote: post #92

As 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…

Actually, building people structures where the world doesn’t support something else disrupts the world less than clearing otherwise usable land. LV is approximately cleared gravel because it is so dry. Opportunity costs, etc etc.

This is clearly an area to think at a larger, national level like the thinking which led to the Hoover Dam and national highway systems. Anything less is shrinking away from the problem.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#272

Post by [deleted] »

somenameforme wrote: post #155
colordrops wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea. People need to connect all the big problems with animal husbandry to their immediate lives so they have impetus to stop eating meat. Most people have virtually no knowledge of how bad meat really is. They just see a product on the shelf that they strongly desire.

So people would just stop eating meat and that's the end of it? Or might it be that you'd then "activate" a sizable chunk of 92%+ of Americans who eat meat to vote for the next candidate who runs on a pro-meat platform. That's a sizable enough influence that the next election would likely look like one big beef industry commercial. If being vegetarian or vegan is an important value to you then the real way to make re…

[deleted]

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#273

Post by bee_rider »

dsr3 wrote: post #115
space_fountain wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But [0] seems to mostly be gravity fed so doesn't need the construction of 4+ new nuclear power plant equivalent generators and as far as I can tell shorter. [1] is much shorter and proposes to move much less water

While not exactly similar to North America continental divide, traversing from the Yangtze river to the North would require traversing some hilly or mountainous area. [0] mentions that there is some uphill location that required pumps. At this point, there is no feasibility studies on the NA East-West water canal. There is no idea on how efficient it is vs desalination (in terms of energy), its ecological impact, and…

Why the Army Corps of Engineers? We already a bureau that looks at this kind of stuff.

> The Waterways Journal noted talks to tap the Mississippi River for western states goes back decades. "The Bureau of Reclamation did a thorough study of the idea of pumping Mississippi River water to Arizona in 2012, concluding that the project would cost $14 billion (in 2012 dollars) and take 30 years to complete. As recently as 2021, the Arizona state legislature urged Congress to fund a technological and feasibility study of a diversion dam and pipeline scheme to harvest floodwater from the Mississippi River to replenish the Colorado River."

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/blogs/ag-policy-blo...

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#274

Post by ianai »

mjevans wrote: post #191
TedShiller wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A planning issue that would be better addressed with goals at the large scale and fine implementation details generally left to the local scale unless issues arose.

“TedShiller” is calling for depopulating large parts of America (California specifically in another comment). Edit-depopulation is the scalpel of war, world war in this case.

It’s this kind of content that screams propaganda of the worst kind.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#275

Post by colordrops »

somenameforme wrote: post #155
colordrops wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea. People need to connect all the big problems with animal husbandry to their immediate lives so they have impetus to stop eating meat. Most people have virtually no knowledge of how bad meat really is. They just see a product on the shelf that they strongly desire.

So people would just stop eating meat and that's the end of it? Or might it be that you'd then "activate" a sizable chunk of 92%+ of Americans who eat meat to vote for the next candidate who runs on a pro-meat platform. That's a sizable enough influence that the next election would likely look like one big beef industry commercial. If being vegetarian or vegan is an important value to you then the real way to make re…

The point of my comment is that people need to be convinced. I obviously wasn't explicit enough based on the responses.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#276

Post by sidewndr46 »

dawnerd wrote: post #154
atoav wrote: post #136

Before looking at the water source, wouldn't doing the bare minimum to control the water sinks would be in order? I mean, we have harder regulations on water useage in the alps, and this is a water rich area where only 3% of the a available water is used. The truth is that the water a land will provide is limited. And of course you could expand this water by also taking the water from another land, but maybe pitting…

We could also start mandating the use of reclaimed water in more residential settings. Seems most places if they do it only water some planters and medians. Needs to be code to run reclaimed water to new construction so it’s a least an option in the future. A lot of cleaned water is just dumped right to sea. So wasteful.

As numerous other commenters have mentioned here, even a total ban on residential water use would not make a difference to the water issue in the American West. There simply is not enough residential usage to matter.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#277

Post by bee_rider »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #129
colordrops wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea. People need to connect all the big problems with animal husbandry to their immediate lives so they have impetus to stop eating meat. Most people have virtually no knowledge of how bad meat really is. They just see a product on the shelf that they strongly desire.

Im sure people will react reasonably when a state subsidized luxury good for everyone reveals its reall price over night.

Why do people make these kinds of objections?

Taper down the subsidies over time rather than implementing them over night.

"If we intentionally implement this policy change in the dumbest, bluntest way possible, it will be disruptive" is an argument for never making any policy change.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#278

Post by solar-ice »

concordDance wrote: post #233
solar-ice wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 avera…

I recently visited Denver for work - I have never felt so entirely trapped in my life. That's not better off to me - not having the freedom to walk, to take the bus, because you're surrounded by what I would call a "motorway" and they call a "street" is something I don't understand.

Imagine trying to raise your kids to be independent human beings when they can't walk to the shops, can't visit their friends without mummy or daddy driving them, and can't take the bus to the local swimming pool/cinema/library/whatever.

Anyway, try not looking around London, it's not the only city in the UK, believe it or not. And I mentioned rent rather than purchase price. Nobody in my social circle can buy in either the US or the UK.

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#279

Post by pfranz »

tzs wrote: post #259
geysersam wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> laundering water exports Sorry I might be ignorant but this sounds ridiculous. How could that ever be economically viable? If you wanted to import water, there are plenty of places (less populated than California) closer to the Arabic peninsula (not on the other side of the world) where water is more plentiful.

He's overlooking that the amount of water used to grow a plant is much more than the amount of water that ends up in the plant. For alfalfa 0.005% of the water used to grow it ends up in the product. The remaining 99.995% ends up mostly in the atmosphere around where the plants are grown, either by transpiration from the plants or by evaporation from the soil around the plants.

I've heard "exporting water" used as shorthand for the issue quite often. Sure, the water is still there, but it is still taking a large amount of potable water and making it non-potable. You're still diverting that water from the natural ecosystem even if it still end up "back in the environment."

Re: Time for Army Corps of Engineers to investigate moving water West?

#280

Post by akiselev »

cwt137 wrote: post #269
akiselev wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those sound like big numbers but unless my napkin math is very wrong it's not even an order of magnitude more than existing Californian water projects like the California Aqueduct [1]. 1 m/s flow through a 40 m diameter pipe is 1256 m^3/s which is less than four times that of the CA aqueduct at 370 m^3/s and the distance is five to six times depending on how you measure it at 2000-2400 miles compared to 440 miles. Ju…

> the biggest challenge would be the right of way and litigation I totally agree. I live in SoCal and there are some infrastructure projects that took forever (ie creating the I105 and finish connecting the I210), or will probably never get completed (ie. finish connecting the I710 and California High Speed Rail) all because of right of way issues and lots of law suits.

The I710 extension has been officially dead for almost a decade - CalTrans has probably finished selling off all the property they bought by now. I grew up in South Pasadena, the little 25k pop town that killed it, and it was a big deal because tons of money finally became available to repair our shitty roads and stop the hemorrhaging of the school district.
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