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Why not create a national acequia system mainly to capture the excess rain that falls in the Eastern United States and divert it to drought in the West? – Carol P. Chamberland, Albuquerque, NM
The idea of taking water from one community and giving it to another has a basis in American history. In 1913, Los Angeles opened an aqueduct to carry water from the Owens Valley, 230 miles north of the city, to continue its growth.
But the project, in addition to costing $23 million at the time, greatly upset the residents of Owens Valley, who were so resentful of losing their water, that they began to dynamite the aqueduct. Repeatedly.
There are some enormous water projects in the United States today, but building a pipeline that covers a significant portion of the country would be astronomically more difficult. For example, the distance between Albuquerque and the Mississippi River—perhaps the closest hypothetical starting point for such a pipeline—is about 1,000 miles, passing at least three states along the way. Carrying that water all the way to Los Angeles would mean piping it at least 1,800 miles across five states.
So the engineering and permitting challenges alone can be daunting. And that assumes that local and state governments that would have to give up their water would be willing to do so.
China has faced similar challenges to build a massive network of waterways that divert water from the country’s humid south to its dry north. But of course, China’s government system makes it a little more possible to achieve engineering feats of this scale.
It would be easier for the United States to build a series of desalination plants along the West coast, according to Greg Pierce, director of the Human Rights Water Solutions Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles. Communities in the West must work harder on other steps, such as water conservation and recycling, before moving on to desalination, which itself is energy-intensive and therefore expensive, he said.
Dr. “It’s not worth it,” Pierce said of the pipeline idea. “You need to exhaust the other eight options first.”
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