One of California's Biggest Sources of Water Just Disappeared

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/one-californias-biggest-sources-water-221600369.html

This stupidity of our leaders is astounding. For decades this Country has huge areas that FLOOD EVERY YEAR ! Then we have other areas of drought and it's going to get worse, the snowpack in the north is melting earlier every year. meaning we know the Mississippi River will be flooding every year. I live close to a huge hole in the Ground called Lake Meredith in Sanford Texas ,it is 100 feet deep, a mile wide, and 25 miles long it has been chronically low for 20 plus years and recently had to stop pumping water to member cities because it got so low. They had to switch to precious well water. Also, there is Lake Mead at the Hoover Dam which is 150 feet lower than it should be. Why have leaders not looked into building a water pipeline from the flood areas to fill these huge man made reservoirs that would hold all the flood water that could possibly be produced. As far as cost it can’t be any worse than the 800 miles of Alaskan Oil pipeline or the proposed 1673 miles of Keystone pipeline that will be pumping very dangerous TAR SANDS OIL. It’s about 1700 miles from the Mississippi River to Lake Mead, if we can do it for oil we can do it for LIFE GIVING WATER !
The Mississippi floods every year and when it's not at flood stage millions of acre-feet of water is still pouring into the Gulf being wasted. Similar scenarios are happening all over the World !


Freshwater makes up a very small fraction of all water on the planet. While nearly 70 percent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 percent of it is fresh. The rest is saline and ocean-based. Even then, just 1 percent of our freshwater is easily accessible, with much of it trapped in glaciers and snowfields. In essence, only 0.007 percent of the planet's water is available to fuel and feed its 6.8 billion people.
There is more acreage in residential lawns in this Country than all our food crops combined ! Most of Arizona and Las Vegas banned lawns many years ago !

 

Are you suggesting this be done only when the Mississippi is at flood stage or every day? If only at flood stage, I don't think that will last long enough to do any good and, if every day, could mess up navigation channels south of the intake.

 

It could be done on a continuous basis ,at what amount I don't know for sure .but like i said there are millions of acre ft of unused water running into the Gulf of Mexico every day and if there is a concern about rising ocean water this would help that problem in some measure.

1 acre-foot of water= 325,851 gal. X millions = a lot of water, enough to help Lake Mead and other areas of need with off-shoots along the way

 

No pipeline made by mankind could possibly handle the amount of water produced by flooding, and that water would be heavily contaminated.

Desalination plants powered by wave energy would be a better solution in both cost and efficiency.

 

If we piped water from Mississippi to California, the state environmental agency would then declare the water toxic and ban it because the delta states do not have the same ridiculous regulations as California.

The California agricultural business model is entering into its terminal decline. There is no reason to prop it up. Modern agriculture is making the need for warm places in the winter to have food doable anywhere in the US if people so desire. That water is a resource of the states that border the Mississippi. These states have a duty to its citizens to block any such attempts because they will be giving away their competitive advantage as they compete for business to locate in them so that one day their citizens too can make $15 an hour working the fast-food drive up window. It is like asking McDonalds to share its pickles with Burger King to extend the metaphor further. Let California dry up. Let the money and jobs flow east.

 

Most water supplies come from surface water somewhere . That's what treatment plants are for. Some areas are in such dire need of water they are sending there treated sewage water back through their drinking water treatment plants and using it again. Any contaminations can be dealt with with the proper treatments i.e. ozone & chlorine for sterilization, Aluminum Sulfate and Ferric Sulfate for coagulation and flocculation and settling of turbidity then running it through filters.. How do you think Las Vegas and the whole State of Calif. is supplied from lake Mead .BIG PIPELINES AND BIG PUMPS. They can build pipelines with pumps that can pump millions of gallons per minute that's not a problem. Calif. has at least one desalinization plant ,but it's not cost effective on a large scale presently, of course if that's your only option ,it suddenly becomes cost effective,

 

We could build recharge dams in strategic locations to replenish the Ogalallah aquifer. Other countries capture ground water.

 

I'd rather keep them where they are, if there just going to move where the resources are and use them up anyway. Where you going to put them!

 

The Texas Panhandle as far as Lubbock Texas Is using well water from the Ogalallah exclusively at the present Because Lake Meredith is too low !

 

Yep............ so I've heard. Maybe they should visit the Saudis.. They have built over 300 huge recharge dams and depending on the substrata they recharge the aquifers.

 

Don't you have to have the water to recharge the dams with first.

 

When it rains in KSA it is an absolute flood.. as serious as the kinds of floods we have seen at least on tv in the MS River Valley or Las Vegas.

 

Well, the recent flooding in East and South Texas has replenished their water tables ,that's the one good thing happening from the flooding and the Panhandle is actually at least 6" above normal rainfall putting Meredith back over 50' from a low of about 26' about 2 years ago. Your Idea is a good one ,but the Texas Panhandle has hundreds of playa lakes that are recharging the Ogalalla more than we ever thought in the past.

 

And then there's the problem of zebra mussels, which are in the Mississippi River. Imagine pumping these pests over to Lake Mead and then having them clog up the intake pipes for Hoover Dam.

 

That could be taken care of with screens on the initial transfer pumps at the source or find a way to eradicate them.

 

This had been proposed at least 20 years ago or more. But little attention was ever paid to it. I suppose there was always bigger fish to fry. But mankind is a rather stupid being when it comes to living with nature. He builds his towns and cities on flood plains and then wonders why they flood every so often. Sometimes those flood plains only flood once every 100 years, but mother nature is pretty constant in how she does things.

Man then tries to make the desert bloom, be it diverting water from a river or pumping aquifers from the ground. The deserts and arid land was that way for a reason and they were not meant to grow tons of crops. Man thinks he can control old mother earth and nature, he build dams, tries to contain rivers, he tries to over rule mother nature and control the weather. He should look at past civilizations to see where they failed when they tried the same thing.

Perhaps with the amount of people on this earth today there is no living in harmony with nature and mother earth. But not to worry, one day old mother earth will tire of mankind's foolishness and bite back.

 

California tree huggers caused their water problems. Let them fix it.

 

Sounds good to me..............

 

I live in a city where one exclusive development is on their own well system. That source started to get low and started pumping sand sometimes ,so they requested the city build lines to service their area. A local News Station went out to interview one of the residents who was complaining about her well pumping sand. The interview took place in her back yard and she was watering as the reporter asked her questions. As the camera panned around
it showed a luscious green lawn about 100' by 100' with numerous area of beautiful flowers and trees that could have been on the cover of BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS. Did I mention she had the water hose in her hand watering while she was complaining about running out of water. ARE PEOPLE REALLY THIS STUPID ! OH, avg. yearly rainfall here is 17 " so the yard didn't get that way naturally !

 

I don't understand why Commiefornia doesn't invest in water desalination plants.

 

I think they have one in Santa Barbara Calif.but I don't think it's operational right now. I know it isn't cost effective right now,but if that's all you got it suddenly becomes cost effective. T. Boone Pickens is from this area and I saw an interview with him several years ago where he said, " My old daddy told me once ,Son your gonna see the day where that water is going to be worth more than oil !". and that's right ,YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT WATER !

 

Hook these up to the plant and go nuts.....plenty of water.

[video=youtube;gcStpg3i5V8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcStpg3i5V8[/video]

 

This is for generating power,but I guess it could be used in conjunction with a desalinization plant to reduce energy costs .

 

Most of the cost in desalination is in the electricity used in the process...you could us these both for the energy and the salt water.

 

I think so, people are that stupid. I read the other day that 80% of California's water use goes to crops and lawns and golf courses. Big fight going on between agriculture and Jerry Brown. California since it became a state has been in a wet period getting more rain than normal. Looking back at its past, California has experienced a 240 year drought and fifty years later after that one, a 180 year drought began.

Mankind loves to challenge mother nature and her natural cycles. In the long run mankind will lose every one of those battles.