airford1
Well-Known Member
What is your point? The West is still building like there is PLENTY of water. Why are they even building pools in the western states? Why are we still FLOOD irrigating in the west and raising Beef cattle in the west?
As an engineer, here's how I look at the idea of pumping water from Mississippi to the West
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my response was made in response to another post about the low hanging fruit had already been plucked. um, no it really hasn't. there's many million acre feet of water that are available to those who will conserve and recycle what amounts they already get.
Colorado Expat
Well-Known Member
In a recent letter to Interior Department and Bureau of Reclamation officials, John Entsminger, the general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, wrote that the last three months of talks in regard to reductions in water use across the Colorado system as a whole have “produced exactly nothing in terms of meaningful collective action to help forestall the looming crisis.” So it really does not seem like the individual states are willing to offer sacrifices for the mutual good. Instead, they will force the federal government to step in and impose some sort of order, then complain about the heavy-handed, dictatorial nature of the federal bureaucracy. But in truth, a drying climate notwithstanding, they have brought this on themselves, and seem totally unwilling to work toward productive consensus as to how to address it.
Literally what I was alluding to on the other thread. A wasted deadline. The states did nothing. Who'd have thunk it.
JFRCalifornia
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
Well, it's always been unrealistic for the states to work out a deal among themselves, and I think BOR knew that going in. It's impossible politics for each state--any concession to another state would be unacceptable at home. That said, BOR had to at least let them try and fail, because otherwise, it would be the heavy hand of the feds coming down on them unreasonably and without giving them a chance. Now as it is, BOR can now say "we gave you a chance, and you all failed, so here's what we're going to do." And then the hammer comes down on everyone. To which all the states will point the blame at the feds, and thus save face internally, at least politically speaking.
That's just how these things work.
Pacific Coast Mike
Active Member
Pump from the snake and or columbia over to flaming Gorge In Wyoming down to Powell...............
Dorado
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
This idea keeps coming up. What makes anyone think that the Snake and Columbia have any water to spare? The Snake is already over allocated with low reservoirs and stream flows. They can’t deliver enough water as it is, without some kind of massive engineering project removing more water from the system. That ain’t happening…
Colorado Expat
Well-Known Member
The idea keeps coming up because people by nature would rather borrow water (or money) from some other source rather than living within their means. But at this point there is no more water from elsewhere than can be magically diverted to save the day. The Colorado River basin is going to have to learn live with the water it has, not the water it wishes it had.
This right here. And ignoring deadlines ain't helpin'
BrianID
Well-Known Member
The most logical place to take from the Snake would be from the stretch of river between Jackson Hole and Palisades Reservoir. Unfortunately there is not any spare water in that river to share. 6 months of the year the Upper Snake has less than 2000 cfs. Image how upset everyone with water rights from the Upper Snake would be if only 1000 cfs (or even 500 cfs) was pumped over to the upper Green River. Even if a full 2000 cfs was taken from the upper snake year round, it would not be enough to solve the problems with Colorado River water demands.
The water rights promised for almost all western rivers is too optimistic. The math used to allocate water was assuming there would never be a drought. There has been a prolonged drought for the last 20 years which isn't an unexpected weather pattern for the Western US.
The only real solution is to reduce the amount of water used by everyone in the Colorado Basin. Reductions in water used should be done now before Powell and Mead are completely dry so we can still have the benefit of the reservoirs with some water and power generation.
There also needs to be a reevaluation on other river systems such as the Rio Grand River(Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico). Elephant Butte is only 4% full right now which has been considered the new normal for the last 20 years. Elephant Butte gives us an idea of what Powells future will look like if consumption is not drastically reduced. California also has issues across the state with more water being promised to different interests than is available each year. We could get lucky and have a weather pattern like we did in the 80's and 90's but luck isn't something that can be planned for.
The load on powell is the forced releases it must perform from the 1922 era.
The easiest way to reduce mandatory releases from powell is to eliminate the load from the 1922 document.
The largest load at powell and on the west is California, get California off the load list and the lake will refill as inflows will balance outflow and all others on the list and along its river path will still enjoy the river for what it is. Next to climate change, California is the largest part of this failure.
The first objective is to get outflow to balance inflow minus evap and absorption. Get to a balanced state.
Mexico and California are both coastal states and hence, fresh water could be replaced with desal. Desal is an easy concept that does scale. It does currently require high energy inputs but this could easily be powered with small localized nuclear or even overflow energy from solar excess during daytime hours. Dedicated solar farms hundreds of miles away could easily power enough desal for California to make their share of the river look like a cocktail straw.
It is time to think outside of the box. Limit the outflow to inflow and encourage coastal states to source from desal. It is possible that the remaining 1922 members be responsible for helping CA with power to run the desal and this could all be sourced with solar. There is enough dirt on the Navajo Nation to power the entire country with solar. And they have the power lines already in place.
Desal is the end game solution.
Your buddy from Star Trek recoined the concept of adding big water hoses at elevation at the Pacific Northwest and allowing gravity to deliver Columbia river water to LA (water hoses lay on the ocean floor near shoreline or along highway 5. This idea goes back to the 60’s. That is a lot easier than sucking water heavy with fertilizers and pollution from the Mississippi.
Climate change is real. Surprise…
The easiest way to reduce mandatory releases from powell is to eliminate the load from the 1922 document.
The largest load at powell and on the west is California, get California off the load list and the lake will refill as inflows will balance outflow and all others on the list and along its river path will still enjoy the river for what it is. Next to climate change, California is the largest part of this failure.
The first objective is to get outflow to balance inflow minus evap and absorption. Get to a balanced state.
Mexico and California are both coastal states and hence, fresh water could be replaced with desal. Desal is an easy concept that does scale. It does currently require high energy inputs but this could easily be powered with small localized nuclear or even overflow energy from solar excess during daytime hours. Dedicated solar farms hundreds of miles away could easily power enough desal for California to make their share of the river look like a cocktail straw.
It is time to think outside of the box. Limit the outflow to inflow and encourage coastal states to source from desal. It is possible that the remaining 1922 members be responsible for helping CA with power to run the desal and this could all be sourced with solar. There is enough dirt on the Navajo Nation to power the entire country with solar. And they have the power lines already in place.
Desal is the end game solution.
Your buddy from Star Trek recoined the concept of adding big water hoses at elevation at the Pacific Northwest and allowing gravity to deliver Columbia river water to LA (water hoses lay on the ocean floor near shoreline or along highway 5. This idea goes back to the 60’s. That is a lot easier than sucking water heavy with fertilizers and pollution from the Mississippi.
Climate change is real. Surprise…
John P Funk
Escalante-Class Member
Good point from Bubba, arbitrary releases that don't account for reality will continue the current result. The question becomes, how do you spread the "pain" to all users equitably.
Gem Morris
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
California has "outsourced" their perceived environmental problems to other western states.
Their refusal to build adequate water storage reservoirs for their population is a prime example. They don't want reservoirs in their state. Estimates are as high as 3 TRILLION gallons of water washed out to the ocean from the LA Basin during an "atmospheric river" storm event.
The IPP near Delta Utah transmits 100% of it's power via DC current to Bakersfield where it is transformed into AC and dumped into the grid yet we get the pollution inland.
JFRCalifornia
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
Not to put too fine a point on the California “lack of reservoirs” issue, but the fact is that California has about 1,500 existing reservoirs with a collective capacity of about 43 million acre feet. That’s a lot. What they lack is the water to fill them.
Yes, there are huge flood events, but there is no real space to put additional capacity to capture that, and more to the point, the existing 43 maf capacity is generally not close to being filled.
The LA basin is fully urbanized, and no place to create that kind of theoretical storage to capture huge flood events.
California’s total water consumption is about 42 maf, around 10% of which is from the Colorado River… potentially offset in the future via desal and recycled wastewater, although from the Imperial Valley’s perspective those two sources aren’t a very convenient replacement…
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California is working on some new storage additions and expansions, also they've been working for years on improving their ability to take the big storm water flows and to move them to where they can be soaked down in instead of letting to flow out through the delta. the problem overall is that the first water works in the state were geared towards removing water as quickly as possible because they were causing floods.
now that they've figured out that a lot of that water could be captured and soaked in to the depleted groundwater aquifers they still have to redo their infrastructure (pumps, canals, etc.) and find the places where the water will do minimal harm when it is sitting there to soak in. they've been doing studies in some places like almond orchards, vineyards, and alfafla fields to see what they can tolerate without beind damaged. and this is only the beginning, much more is happening with cleaning up and reusing stormwater flows in cities and changing rivers to allow them to be more natural and to soak more water in, whereas before they were lined with concrete.
if you look and have been following these sorts of topics for years (i have) they are there to be found in the news and in the budgets of various cities.
it just takes time to get all this infrastructure changed and improved to reflect the new realities but it is happening and it will continue to happen (because it is still the cheapest water they can get).
now that they've figured out that a lot of that water could be captured and soaked in to the depleted groundwater aquifers they still have to redo their infrastructure (pumps, canals, etc.) and find the places where the water will do minimal harm when it is sitting there to soak in. they've been doing studies in some places like almond orchards, vineyards, and alfafla fields to see what they can tolerate without beind damaged. and this is only the beginning, much more is happening with cleaning up and reusing stormwater flows in cities and changing rivers to allow them to be more natural and to soak more water in, whereas before they were lined with concrete.
if you look and have been following these sorts of topics for years (i have) they are there to be found in the news and in the budgets of various cities.
it just takes time to get all this infrastructure changed and improved to reflect the new realities but it is happening and it will continue to happen (because it is still the cheapest water they can get).
nzaugg
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
Really excellent points, John! You don't build reservoirs to capture 100-year or 50-year rainfall events. You build them to capture excess flows from above average years to use in below average years or to capture average flows and allow outflow on your schedule rather than the schedule nature provides. Dams are built with the 50-year and 100-year returning flows in mind, but from safety considerations, not sizing or siting consideration.
When we talk about CA water usage issues, most of the transfer is internal to CA, with Imperial Valley/SoCal coast being the exception, though CA would argue that the usage was established with canals off the Colorado, which forms the eastern border of So.Cal, making it an internal flow and not an out of basin transfer. Likewise, Utah, CO, WY, and NM have out of basin transfers that they would consider as integral to the water rights of the respective states. AZ and NV water all returns to the CO river drainage, though lower than we might like.
Additionally, the IPP was constructed where it is in Utah to take advantage of area coal mines, not as an outsource for pollution (though that was also an advantage). Iit is cheaper to connect a power line to an demand area than to ship all the coal necessary for power generation. Utah provided a generous tax break for IPP as well to provide Delta with some good jobs and to provide Utah coal mines with a good market. IPP will be switching power sources, which will provide even more jobs for Delta, though the coal mines won't be as lucky (though I understand IPP was switching from Utah sources anyway).
Back on topic, the whole point of a MS to LP pipeline would be additional supply to the lake. Unless demand upstream and downstream of LP is reduced or additional supply (natural or piped in) is brought onboard, we will see continued depletion. So my idea if we want to preserve Powell:
- Upstream demands must be frozen... No more upper basin diversion projects. What you have right now is what you will get unless there is a big shift in supply to the system that shows long-term sustainability
- Lower basin needs to identify alternate sources to bring into the system. This will include reuse in CA, desalination in CA, desalination in MX and AZ. Pumping up to these areas will max out at 1200 ft and doesn't have nearly the issue to contend with that a MS to LP pipeline would have. Desalination will only cover municipal uses though, since it is too expensive for agriculture volume
- Offset CO trans basin diversion with pipeline from MO/MS rivers to cover KS & NB flow demands. CO captures more of the Arkansas and Platte Rivers and significantly reduces transfers CO River water to front range.
- Enhance Imperial Valley and Arizona irrigation systems. Subsidize change over in exchange for reduction in water rights. This will require eminent domain actions in cases.
- All will be funded by new tax on water consumption in the area. Agricultural users, industrial, users, and municipal users will all incur a new CO river transfer tax in proportion to consumption.
JFRCalifornia
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
There's a lot of really good thinking in this post, worth reading a few times. It's a good place to start in any serious roundtable forum focused on solutions....
BillG
Active Member
Seems the easiest way to get pollution-limited water from the Mississippi drainage is near its source. The Yellowstone River at Livingston, MT has seasonal flooding Jun/Jul of excess of 10000 cfs. Elevation 4500 ft.
https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/mt/...od=&begin_date=2021-08-23&end_date=2022-08-22
Continental divide at Wamsutter, WY on I-80 is 7000 ft. Downhill to Green River from there. A dam somewhere between Livingston and Billings. Very few eminent domain issues in WY. Problem solved? (haha)
https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/mt/...od=&begin_date=2021-08-23&end_date=2022-08-22
Continental divide at Wamsutter, WY on I-80 is 7000 ft. Downhill to Green River from there. A dam somewhere between Livingston and Billings. Very few eminent domain issues in WY. Problem solved? (haha)
Dorado
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
Haha...I doubt the folks in ND and SD would agree, since the reservoirs on the Missouri are pretty low right now...
Gem Morris
Keeper of San Juan Secrets
We probably need to figure how to get water out of Central and South America since that’s where all the US population growth is coming from right now
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