Filling Lake Mead with Mississippi River Water No Longer a Pipe Dream
Posted on: February 7, 2023, 02:30h.
Last updated on: February 10, 2023, 10:54h.
Despite recent rains, the water level in Lake Mead – which supplies Las Vegas with 90% of its water – was 1,046.94 feet above sea level on Feb. 2. That’s only 28% of its full capacity. And cutting water use, even drastically, may not solve the problem.
Because of climate change, some estimates predict that the Colorado River may deliver only half its current amount of water by the year 2100.
Pumping Mississippi River water into Lake Mead has been suggested before. But as water levels drop – threatening to eventually cut off California, Arizona, and Mexico from their Colorado River water allotments – and as engineering technology advances, large-scale river diversion doesn’t seem as much of a pipe dream as it once did.
In 2021, the Arizona state legislature actually passed a measure urging Congress to investigate pumping flood water from the Mississippi to the Colorado to boost its flow. Studies show that a project like this would be possible, though it would take decades of construction and billions of dollars. Maybe even trillions.
“I think it would be foolhardy to dismiss it as not feasible,” Richard Rood, professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “But we need to know a lot more about it than we currently do.”
Large-scale river diversion projects have been proposed in the US since the 1960s when an American company sought to redistribute Alaskan water across the continent using canals and reservoirs. That plan never generated enough support – a fate shared by similar proposals in Minnesota and Iowa.
Still Too Pricey … For Now
In 2012, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation performed a Colorado River Basin analysis considering several solutions to the current drought – including importing water from the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.
Under the analyzed scenario, water would be diverted to Colorado’s Front Range and areas of New Mexico. That would cost at least $1,700 per acre-feet of water, potentially yield 600,000 acre-feet of water per year by 2060, and take 30 years to construct.
A decade later, Roger Viadero, an environmental scientist and engineer at Western Illinois University, calculated that moving this scale of water would require a pipe 88 feet in diameter – twice as long as a semi-trailer – or a 100-foot-wide channel that’s 61 feet deep.
“As an engineer, I can guarantee you that it is doable,” Viadero told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “But there are tons of things that can be done but aren’t ever done.”
Viadero’s team estimated the cost of buying enough water to fill up the Colorado River’s Lake Mead and Lake Powell at more than $134 billion, assuming a penny per gallon. Add to that heavy construction costs and the costs of powering the equipment needed to pump the water over the Western Continental Divide. Buying the land to secure water rights would be very costly, too.
Politics: The Other Problem
The political hurdles are also considerable. They include wetlands protections, endangered species protections, drinking water supply considerations, and interstate shipping protections. Precedents set by other diversion attempts – such as the ones that created the Great Lakes Compact, also cast doubt over the political viability of any large-scale Mississippi River diversion attempt.
And transnational pipelines would also impact ecological resources. Lower Mississippi River flow means less sediment carried down to Louisiana, where it’s needed for coastal restoration. Diverting that water also means spreading problems, like pollutants, excessive nutrients, and invasive species such as Asian carp.
None of this even considers the most important question: Is there even enough water to spare? The Mississippi River basin may no longer be a reliable answer to the Colorado River basin’s problem since the Mississippi is drying up, too. Water levels are at or below the low-water threshold along a nearly 400-mile stretch of the river. This past year, sunken boats, such as the Diamond Lady riverboat casino, are surfacing like bodies are in Lake Mead.
“No one wants to leave the western states without water,” Melissa Scanlan, a freshwater sciences professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “But moving water from one drought-impacted area to another is not a solution.”
Growing Precedent
Still, there is hope. Last year, a Kansas groundwater management agency received a permit to truck 6,000 gallons of Missouri River water into Kansas and Colorado to recharge an aquifer. Several approved diversions already drain water from the Great Lakes. And in northwestern Iowa, a river has repeatedly been pumped dry by a rural water utility that sells at least a quarter of the water outside the state. And there
In July 2022, former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation investing $1.2 billion into projects that conserve water and bring more into the state. Among its provisions, the law granted Arizona’s water infrastructure finance authority to “investigate the feasibility” of potential out-of-state water import agreements.
And, as the tired adage goes, desperate times call for desperate measures. According to a two-year projection by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, by the end of July 2024, Lake Mead’s water level could fall to as low as 992 feet above sea level. That’s perilously close to a dead pool (895 feet), the point when a reservoir is so low gravity will no longer allow it to release water downstream. If and when Lake Mead hits this point, that will be dire news for downstream regions, including Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, Tucson, and Mexico.
“It’s possible that the situation gets so dire that there is an amount of money out there that could overcome all of these obstacles,” Rhett Larson, an Arizona State University professor of water law, told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “It might be in the trillions, but it probably does exist.”
In the meantime, researchers encourage more feasible and sustainable options, such as better water conservation, water recycling, and less agricultural reliance.
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Last Comments ( 177 )
how about we don't punish the Midwest and South for the Mojave states' poor resource management
Come for the comments. The problem isn't the growing cities in the southwest, it's corporations like Nestle that are permitted to pump groundwater supplies dry. Nut orchards that demand many times more water than vegetable farms. Only about 20-30% of all water from the Colorado goes to households. The rest is farms and industry.
As long as the Mississippi can be diverted using all electric machinery earth movers dozens ect im sure California will agree this is best for the environment over all
Miss management of water is what it’s called, it’s not called climate change, quit trying to sell that BS. The earth has been here 5 billion years and I can tell you the weather is always changing. I’m tired of that fucking agenda “climate change” cut the bullshit dude.!!!
Why not just desalinate the ocean waters and then take all the salty water and put it back on the dry lakes and rebuild the salt that everybody out west has been pumping the water out to get to the potash for the concrete put the salt back on the desert where it was several feet thick and now it's less than an inch and a half inch in places and return the salt to Bonneville and all the other points out there that all the salts about gone
Get California,to get ready of water rights, Arizona has all the rights to Colorado river, it runs long a yr around there, get Saudi out using Colorado river in Arizona, problem solution
The Mississippi was at one of its lowest levels in its history. So you idiots want to take water from the Mississippi. While the reservoirs in California have risen. STUPIDITY!
Its a simple solution, stop growing food for everyone east of the Rockies! Then the amount of water will be saved to save the entire Colorado river and refill the dams. Everything i have read here is people complaining about California and people living in the desert SW. If we only used the water to feed the West side all of the people east of the Rockies can feed and drink their brown water.
Here's a novel idea, move to where there is water. Not our fault they do not know how to conserve their water.
Some of you Americans seem to be oblivious of the fact that international waters like the Columbia River and the Great Lakes have set quotas for each country that are negotiated, not taken by jingoistic yahoos. As for the Great Slave Lake, it is in Canada and not subject to US control. Why don't you try to buy Greenland - again?
I think that desalination from the Pacific is the best option. The technology has come a long way, and is getting better. Also, reclaiming deserts will bring moisture back, as the Chinese are doing in the Gobi desert..The salt can be dealt with easy enough... ( load it in a ship and dump it way out in the ocean.)
Las Vegas already recycles all water that goes down the drain for almost 0 water use. So what you don't use goes to get recycled to use again. Which all states should do, at least the Colorado River states. Use Las Vegas statistics and see how much water can be saved. Just Saying
Why not desert water from Alaska.
I THINK THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER IDEA IS A HORRIBLE IDEA...I MEAN LETS JUST DESTROY EVERY DAMN THING EARTH
Here's a thought. If there's only enough water in Lakes Powell and Mead to support a given amount of people, cities need to stop growing and increasing its' population. This should be considered on a national level. One easy solution is to ship every illegal migrant back across the border. How can this country justify taking in more people when it can't even support the ones it already has? Canada has got voluntary assisted suicide in an attempt to reduce its population. Are we going to do the same here? God help us if we do. Those people within our wonderful government that always have our best interests in mind should've seen this problem coming ten years ago and taken measures then to avoid the problem we face today. They've waited until nearly the last minute. In the meantime, keep building more overpriced homes, keep allowing the influx of people that dont belong here and when people in places like CA and southern NV are paying triple the price they pay now for water, all I can say is "Good thing I have my own well."