Every year the Missouri and Mississippi River systems flood their banks in MN and IA and MO, causing billions in damage and coating billions in trying to manage and control all that extra water as it moves into the Gulf.
And...every 5-10 years or so the arid regions of KS, CO, OK, NM and west Texas wither away under drought. Causing the same kinds of economic losses and opportunity costs. Along with all us boomtown cities waiting downstream along those 20 or so river systems, just dying to get some of that water.
Yes, I understand that pipelining some very small % of all that extra water up there across and up the Great plains would be VERY expensive. And an epic engineering challenge.
But wouldn't even being able to move something like a very miniscule % amount (like 1-2%) of all that water be able to deliver huge benefits towards both of these natural resources issues? And prevent annually recurring losses, as described above, to help justify the cost?
But it's been done before, and in that length and scale.
In Alaska, to move oil over 800 miles over several mountain ranges. Which is roughly the same distance that would be required to move water from Central MN to somewhere south of Lubbock and many discharge points and waiting reservoirs in between.
Hasn't the combination of time, circumstances, resource scarcity, and engineering capabilities all come along, in order to do this?
I'm not an engineer.
Nor a hydrologist.
Nor a Finance person for mega construction projects.
Just an IT and data guy, who wonders all the time, when he sees all these recurring stories about floods and droughts happening in parallel on the news. And wonders why this hasn't been done (or at least attempted) before?
The GPWP!!!
Let's build it!
Thanks in advance
And...every 5-10 years or so the arid regions of KS, CO, OK, NM and west Texas wither away under drought. Causing the same kinds of economic losses and opportunity costs. Along with all us boomtown cities waiting downstream along those 20 or so river systems, just dying to get some of that water.
Yes, I understand that pipelining some very small % of all that extra water up there across and up the Great plains would be VERY expensive. And an epic engineering challenge.
But wouldn't even being able to move something like a very miniscule % amount (like 1-2%) of all that water be able to deliver huge benefits towards both of these natural resources issues? And prevent annually recurring losses, as described above, to help justify the cost?
But it's been done before, and in that length and scale.
In Alaska, to move oil over 800 miles over several mountain ranges. Which is roughly the same distance that would be required to move water from Central MN to somewhere south of Lubbock and many discharge points and waiting reservoirs in between.
Hasn't the combination of time, circumstances, resource scarcity, and engineering capabilities all come along, in order to do this?
I'm not an engineer.
Nor a hydrologist.
Nor a Finance person for mega construction projects.
Just an IT and data guy, who wonders all the time, when he sees all these recurring stories about floods and droughts happening in parallel on the news. And wonders why this hasn't been done (or at least attempted) before?
The GPWP!!!
Let's build it!
Thanks in advance
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