Changed My Mind A Little...

Changed my mind a little...

regarding this, specifically where I talk about the difficulties of pumping desalinated water from the coasts to interior states in the western U.S..

What I realized, on stewing over it, is that I conflated a few issues into a single statement, and went on to then say that it would be something on the order of a century (so, really, anywhere between 20 and 100 years) to solve those issues if someone really wanted the population in both California and the rest of the western U.S. states to grow while maintaining proper water security.

First, the tech problems wouldn't, I think, be the stumbling point. If you have sufficient cheap electrical power availability (if solar continues improving at the rates it has over the past 10 years, as one example) to desalinate the amount of water you'd need for millions of people per day, then you certainly then have the power needed to pump that water uphill.

And, I'd add that the pipeline industry would happily switch to building and operating freshwater pipelines. It makes life a lot simpler, in that business, if a midnight phone call of "We sprung a leak" only means that you've got clean potable water as a pollutant. Yes, mudslides and floods, but at least the EPA's emergency response doesn't much involve the toxicity end of things.

No, the real tangle that will make these sorts of pipelines a mess to build is the infrastructure siting and permitting and competing authorities...

Everyone will immediately commence to screaming at each other, right?

But. There is actually a huge saving grace here. And that's that there are already water systems in place. Reservoirs and municipal water systems. And each reservoir and municipal storage system would likely jump at the chance to, in effect, guarantee full storage.

So, if the route to be used takes advantage of the existing systems, and just adds storage (municipal) or simple pumps into existing (reservoirs) then all the overhead squabbling might actually be kept to a minimum.

Further, following existing flow routes uphill in this way means that the uphill pipeline would mostly follow existing waterways. That doesn't necessarily mean you'd be home free, but since leaks are only potable fresh water, the hazards here are greatly reduced.

You could probably even come up with underwater piping, if you wanted to do it that way. Not for the whole of it, considering what maintenance would look like when someone hits the pipe with a ski boat prop.

But here I think you'd just run through existing canal systems, farm and municipal pipelines, and work with the existing system and stakeholders wherever possible. A takeoff for the local co-op of farms at each stage will gain you a lot of support, I promise you.

This would, importantly, if done correctly (which, sigh, means it won't likely happen) also insure that two significant stakeholders are least disrupted: Tribal landholders and the Federal Parks and Wildlife/BLM lands. If such pipelines follow existing routes to the greatest extent possible, and if the total supply insures that, just like the farmers and municipalities and reservoirs all benefit from takeoffs, then so too the Tribal lands and BLM lands?

I'm not saying you will make the desert bloom any time soon. But on reflection, the problems aren't all that difficult, if those involved take some time up front to understand all the possibilities that can benefit everyone involved.

But that's just the pipeline? What about the fact that Californians, and the rest of the western states, are already pretty comfortable with the density of the population and won't likely change their viewpoint anytime soon?

That one, well, that one's the uncrackable nut of the problem, isn't it?

So, upon review, at this point I now think I'd put a most likely path as this: tech and energy availability will keep improving. And the dry states will use it to insure that the existing population can take nice long showers, grow all the fruits and vegetables they want, maybe even build the occasional apartment building, grow the population a little more.

A little more? How much more will depend both on the water availability, and on what happens when most or all of the cars on the freeways are zero emissions. L.A. without smog, with all the water you can pump on your grass, and plenty of electricity that doesn't much depend on the grid? They'll fight like hell to build and protect that idealization, I think. Stay off the 405 folks, it's gonna be busy.