The LA basin, OC and San Diego aren't technically deserts. San Diego gets 20% more rain than what generally qualifies as a desert(10"/yr).
I agree in spirit though.
We have seen an increase in reservoir capacity over the last 20 years in SoCal though. San Diego seems to be doing fairly well, water wise, with toilet to tap and desalination.
We really need a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122) though. Climate change is coming. We need infrastructure for moving large amounts of water around the country so we can continue to grow food in the sun belt.
Sorry, but that is a cute way to say "take water from people who have it".
For decades, southwest states have put up billboards in rust belt states to entice workers to move in order to keep workers filling their economies. Much to do was always made about the great climate. So if climate is an economic advantage, so is easy access to water.
These large bodies of water are not just for irrigation, they are the method for which much of the nation's harvest of grain is moved to eastern ports. It still is used to move the raw materials for steel production. Tapping the Great Lakes to support California's insatiable thirst will only drop the lakes to a level where shipping becomes unprofitable.
Climate change is already making food growing possible in some formerly unlikely locations. I'm exactly at latitude 42 degrees (it runs right through my living room). Not a mile from my home, they grow broccoli and other vegetables right up until December 1, unheard of twenty years ago. They are now on the second planting of lettuce a week into May.
Climate change is going to take that market away from these states whether they have water or not.
Yeah why don't you head to the southeast the next time they have a flood event and tell them that they need to keep all that water and also they can't have anymore produce from west of the rockies.
It's hard to take you seriously when you suggest we're going to drain the great lakes. Do you think the only supply of freshwater the west could tap is the great lakes?
The breadbasket of the US, the great plains, is also prone to water insecurity. This isn't just about the west. Climate change will bring unpredictable change and we need a way to move water around. You never know, you could be living under a drought in 20 years. Will you still fight water redistribution then?
A national water grid would be incredibly expensive for what it provides.
I wonder how feasible it would be to have the federal government get California to relinquish some of its rights to the Colorado River in exchange to help fund desalination plants. Then the Colorado River can go more towards providing water to landlocked states in the southwest that don't have such an option.
Don't we already have oil pipelines criss-crossing the country? Why would water be any harder? Enough capacity to ensure the populace has enough to drink (ie not replace agricultural requirements) seems like a reasonable goal.
> I wonder how feasible it would be to have the federal government get California to relinquish some of its rights to the Colorado River in exchange to help fund desalination plants.
California and the lower basin states already overconsume their allotment of water from the Colorado River, some years by a lot.
Colorado and other upper basin states are tired of it, and are evaluating what legal approach makes the most sense to force a stop to excess water releases into the lower basin.
The amount of water you'd have to move to sustain agriculture in arid regions is a stupendously huge number. We can't even keep up with badly needed electrical transmission grid construction (and maintenance), which would be orders of magnitude cheaper to build and maintain than what you propose. I struggle to see how thousands of miles of water pipeline hundreds of feet in diameter is practical to construct or maintain. That's like type 1 civilization class of engineering project.
I'd like to see some napkin math on this. You don't have to provide all the water for Ag, you just need to supplement local shortfalls. No one is assuming rainfall in the western US will drop to zero.
> We can't even keep up with badly needed electrical transmission
Oh gosh I guess we should just give up then. Oh well, we tried. Let's all commit mass suicide now. Sorry but this modern, visionless attitude nauseates me. I'm sorry you've believe so much of modern media that you've given up hope.
Water storage is electrical storage(gravity based). Pumped hydro can even out renewable energy and allow it provide base load.
> That's like type 1 civilization class of engineering project.
How much of what is currently being grown there would still be cost effective if they have to pay the cost of actually moving that water through the grid?
Almonds and alfalfa are the two that seems to come up the most often, but I'm not pretending to have done my own research.
Or, instead of building a national water grid and thus another piece of incredibly expensive infrastructure that you won't find politicians willing to maintain 30 years from now, you could abandon areas like SoCal that are clearly becoming unsuitable to sustaining life. It's going to happen anyway, why not get a head start?
I agree in spirit though.
We have seen an increase in reservoir capacity over the last 20 years in SoCal though. San Diego seems to be doing fairly well, water wise, with toilet to tap and desalination.
We really need a national water grid(https://www.osti.gov/biblio/963122) though. Climate change is coming. We need infrastructure for moving large amounts of water around the country so we can continue to grow food in the sun belt.