At that point, calling the fluid in the Mississippi River "water" is stretching the definition. It is rich and chunky with the flavor of all the land it fell on as rain. It'll put hair on your chest and crayfish in your pockets. Drink enough of it and you'll start to call them crawdaddies.
Sure its not hard to filter, but what will you do with all the silt? Look at how much effort we spend now dealing with all the silt right there. Without trying to handle it as part of water extraction.
I think there's gonna be better luck looking elsewhere, desalinization looks like about as much effort and less distance to move the results.
I like the idea of moving it as a slurry to upland farms. Erosion remediation: put the dirt back. Still going to be expensive and difficult; it's heavy and its gritty and corrosive and erosive. Pumping river water eats pumps.
It could, but doesn't; I've been in the river south of Memphis once long ago and had some relevant experience but not expertise.
All hail the Army Corps of Engineers guys who actually design and are responsible for understanding our efforts to modulate that river. I've just helped scratch at the dirt in accordance with their directions a couple times.
Rivers tend to carve their own channel. The Mississippi is an exception because of how little elevation change there is. But a properly engineered channel should remain clear. The silt ultimately would end up on farmers fields which is generally a good thing.
This reminds me of the time Wikipedia kept reverting edits to the article for “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” comparing fecal coliform levels above Vicksburg as a proportion of that of the Ganges.
Reminds me of the running jokes in Don Rosa’s Life of Scrooge - Uncle Porthole is always finding new ways of describing how muddy the Mississippi is (I believe many taken from Twain).
The idea is not really new. Similar suggestions have been made in India too over the last 2 decades - Interlinking of indian rivers to prevent floods and distribute water to areas that have less of it. It sounds all nice and logical, but everyone is unsure of the ecological impact.
Instead of looking for lebensraum to steal from their neighbors, California should charge people a fair price for the limited resources and tell Californians to move to more sustainable parts of the world if they don't like the shortages/expenses.
If you want Mississippi water, pick up your ass and relocate it to one of the 32 states in the Mississippi watershed.
There's a lot of agriculture that occurs in California. I am certain people in the 32 states within Mississippi watershed eat a fair amount of food or enjoy lower food prices that occur in part because of California agriculture. Part of the whole reason of being in a 50 state union is to collectively pool our resources to improve everyone's lives and the wider economy.
Wasn't it the great economist Milton Friedman who said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"? Or was that someone else who said that?
In all seriousness, the way the west (and California in particular) price water defies logic. All this talk about senior and junior water rights doesn't make any sense: it only benefits the entrenched incumbents. A properly setup market would simply price out water uses whose utility was materially less than demand of the produced product.
Not sure if being facetious, but just in case not or in case others are unfamiliar:
It's a quotation used by the socialist trio of Cabet-Blanc-Marx, and itself has origins in scripture, just with a materialist reframing, instead of a spiritual one.
No, about as wrong on the quotation as can be: it’s a socialist slogan, popularized by Karl Marx. However, I’m a big fan of attributing it to Friedman.
Is that weird? Seems optimal for each region to grow the most efficient crops for their local conditions, which would require at least some of that type of trade.
Deserts are great places to grow things if you have the water available. Basically the foundation of civilization. See Egypt and Mesopotamia. Almonds grow great in California and are a great cash crop. We need to trade something to China for all that stuff.
Almonds and cotton require basically the same setup apparently - so growing almonds in cotton states would make more sense but nobody wants Georgian almonds
Perhaps we should be shouldn't be growing food in a desert?
Farmers in California are literally pumping the aquifers dry. There are already people who have had to abandon their homes because you can't just dig the wells deeper to hit water anymore.
>A frenzy of well drilling by California farmers leaves taps running dry
The notion of growing "food" (i.e. almonds for export to China) in a desert is ludicrous, but how would you accomplish a ban on agriculture? At best, you might be able to create a program for farmers to give up their water rights in exchange for compensation. Even this is dubious, however. Water rights east of the Mississippi work differently than water rights to the west. In the west, they are based on seniority.
The Central Valley is not a desert, I do not like this meme.
Farmers in California were running out of water 100 years ago too, and people responded with massive engineering projects to regulate water throughout the year and move it from places that were at the time water-rich to places where more water would allow using the extremely fertile land with favorable weather for agriculture.
what is the relevance of needing to have a lot of pumps? Do you think the engineering involved is beyond the capability of the US, and your argument now is that it cannot be done?
The idea that californias water projects only direct water downhill is invalid anyway - the California aqueduct flows uphill quite a lot, and over mountains.
No. More water arriving directly in the Central Valley would make it worse for agriculture, not better. Rain or snow are bad for crops. Controlled irrigation using water from somewhere else plus the mediterranean climate combine to make the Central Valley very productive.
If it were such a great climate for growing things, they wouldn't be talking about getting fresh water from thousands of miles away.
It used to be a great climate for growing things, a century ago. But that was during an abnormally wet period in Californian history. California is usually much dryer than it was a century ago, and is drying out once again. In California, people think one or two centuries of experience with the land is a long time. In most of the world, that's a joke. Try farming the land for a thousand years before you form such expectations.
By your criteria, the Central Valley was never a great climate for growing things. A century ago there was not enough water in the San Joaquin valley, and people were talking about getting fresh water from hundreds of miles away.
I assume your opinion is probably that the water projects in California were all mistakes, but it’s not accurate to say that at some point the Central Valley was naturally ideal for growing things without artificial irrigation from far away.
but “does not require artificial irrigation” was not what I meant by “ideal climate.”
The Colorado River Compact controls water allocations from the Colorado River, not the individual states. The problem is the compact allocates more water than is in the river on average historically.
Indeed, a huge amount of food. And while we pay midwestern farmers not to grow so prices remain stable and high enough, we hide the external costs of water resources, and erosion keeping them artificially low. Big agriculture is a horribly distorted market and I'm not sure anyone knows what actual societal level costs are for broccoli or pistachios at this point.
How come there isn't enough talk about desalinization? Or am I oversimplifying this?
The western states are right next to an ocean (the largest one in fact) with sea levels and the amount of water rising faster than they could ever use it. There's basically unlimited (salt) water there. Desalinization is an extremely energy hungry process, but we also have a TON of sun and heat energy in these states as well that can be utilized.
Santa Barbara built a plant in the early 90s then mothballed it for 30 years, then had to spend a packet to upgrade it for reuse. Probably they are afraid of some gigantic sunk cost like that happening.
Because nuclear energy is the only viable (with the ability to not be capital-intensive if NIMBYs can be excluded from processes like siting) energy option for a process as energy-intensive as desalinization is. However, there's no realistic hope of excluding them.
On an annualized basis, tapwater in San Francisco costs $3.68 per cubic meter[1], which is actually approaching the rate for desalination to be cost effective. (For agriculture, it still far far (far) away.)
Traditional (distillation) desalination uses too much energy (10+ kWh per m3). Reverse osmosis plants drastically reduce that, to the 3kWh range[2]. From what I remember from my now-outdated university studies, the capital cost of the membrane was more the limiting factor, as they get fouled pretty quickly. Disposal of very-high-salinity brine is also an issue.
Do they realize that the Old River Control Structure is stopping the Mississippi from avulsing down the Atchafalaya towards Morgan City? New Orleans won’t have any river water then.
> Parsons said the plan would replenish the upper Missouri and Mississippi Rivers during dry spells, increase hydropower along the Columbia River and stabilize the Great Lakes. He proposed using nuclear explosions to excavate the system's trenches and underground water storage reservoirs.
If the Boring Company's cost estimates are anywhere near realistic a 1500 mile tunnel isn't too far off the cost range of other big infrastructure projects.
(Yes I realize this taken with a heaping spoonful of "what if", there are far better things to spend this money on, unknowable environmental impacts, there is a personality cult around that company, etc.)
Whenever someone estimates the time for some big project like this, "reviews and permitting and lawsuits" is always the biggest component. That's what scuttled the Huntington Beach desalinization plant.
After the Northridge Quake in LA, the Santa Monica Freeway was repaired in less than three months. Given the political will, the procedural roadblocks can be dealt with.
77 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadAt that point, calling the fluid in the Mississippi River "water" is stretching the definition. It is rich and chunky with the flavor of all the land it fell on as rain. It'll put hair on your chest and crayfish in your pockets. Drink enough of it and you'll start to call them crawdaddies.
Sure its not hard to filter, but what will you do with all the silt? Look at how much effort we spend now dealing with all the silt right there. Without trying to handle it as part of water extraction.
I think there's gonna be better luck looking elsewhere, desalinization looks like about as much effort and less distance to move the results.
https://www.corrosionpedia.com/internal-corrosion-of-pipelin...
All hail the Army Corps of Engineers guys who actually design and are responsible for understanding our efforts to modulate that river. I've just helped scratch at the dirt in accordance with their directions a couple times.
If you want Mississippi water, pick up your ass and relocate it to one of the 32 states in the Mississippi watershed.
In all seriousness, the way the west (and California in particular) price water defies logic. All this talk about senior and junior water rights doesn't make any sense: it only benefits the entrenched incumbents. A properly setup market would simply price out water uses whose utility was materially less than demand of the produced product.
It's a quotation used by the socialist trio of Cabet-Blanc-Marx, and itself has origins in scripture, just with a materialist reframing, instead of a spiritual one.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_a...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Farmers in California are literally pumping the aquifers dry. There are already people who have had to abandon their homes because you can't just dig the wells deeper to hit water anymore.
>A frenzy of well drilling by California farmers leaves taps running dry
https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-farms-water-well...
Ground water is a limited public resource. Farmers do not have the right to pump the aquifers dry and render the area uninhabitable.
I would imagine that you could require a license to pump ground water in areas where the ground water level has already dropped dangerously low.
>Water rights east of the Mississippi work differently than water rights to the west. In the west, they are based on seniority.
That applies to water on top of the ground (lakes, rivers, streams), not the water under the ground.
Farmers in California were running out of water 100 years ago too, and people responded with massive engineering projects to regulate water throughout the year and move it from places that were at the time water-rich to places where more water would allow using the extremely fertile land with favorable weather for agriculture.
It’s not insane to consider doing the same again.
The idea that californias water projects only direct water downhill is invalid anyway - the California aqueduct flows uphill quite a lot, and over mountains.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonston_Pumping_Plant is one of at least 5 pumping plants along the aqueduct.
sun
good soil, almost all capability class 1
ideal mediterranean climate
Not such an ideal climate evidently, since they're so desperate to import water.
Irrigation agriculture, rather than depending on natural water for growing, was an innovation humanity developed 6000+ years ago.
It used to be a great climate for growing things, a century ago. But that was during an abnormally wet period in Californian history. California is usually much dryer than it was a century ago, and is drying out once again. In California, people think one or two centuries of experience with the land is a long time. In most of the world, that's a joke. Try farming the land for a thousand years before you form such expectations.
I assume your opinion is probably that the water projects in California were all mistakes, but it’s not accurate to say that at some point the Central Valley was naturally ideal for growing things without artificial irrigation from far away.
but “does not require artificial irrigation” was not what I meant by “ideal climate.”
in good part because California doesn't charge people a fair price for the limited resources.
The Mississippi River basin is hardly an agricultural desert.
The western states are right next to an ocean (the largest one in fact) with sea levels and the amount of water rising faster than they could ever use it. There's basically unlimited (salt) water there. Desalinization is an extremely energy hungry process, but we also have a TON of sun and heat energy in these states as well that can be utilized.
https://santabarbaraca.gov/government/departments/public-wor...
Traditional (distillation) desalination uses too much energy (10+ kWh per m3). Reverse osmosis plants drastically reduce that, to the 3kWh range[2]. From what I remember from my now-outdated university studies, the capital cost of the membrane was more the limiting factor, as they get fouled pretty quickly. Disposal of very-high-salinity brine is also an issue.
[1] https://sfpuc.org/sites/default/files/accounts-and-services/... says ~$10.71/unit, with each unit being 768 gallons, or 2907 litres. (there's a lower rate for the first 4 unit, which I would guess is subsidized). 10.71/2.907=$3.68
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis#Desalination
"nuclear explosions"!! Sounds legit.
(Yes I realize this taken with a heaping spoonful of "what if", there are far better things to spend this money on, unknowable environmental impacts, there is a personality cult around that company, etc.)
After the Northridge Quake in LA, the Santa Monica Freeway was repaired in less than three months. Given the political will, the procedural roadblocks can be dealt with.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-04-06-mn-42778-...
But, I imagine it’s much easier to fast track an infrastructure repair or replacement project than it is for a brand new infrastructure project.
you've got immense coastal regions and those big blue oceans on both sides. invest in your future for once.
Has anybody here read it?