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 )
Sea water can remove the salt its not hard..
Dont live in the desert
Desalination, of ocean water, will be the only thing, that doesn't make A bigger mess later. The economic structure, in the United States, And those who don't want improvement in everyone s lives, Will have to be removed.
This is a wacky idea; there are loads, and loads; of other ideas that should be tried, first; and that are a lot cheaper. What is this, The Guaranteed Employment for Engineers, Act? I am a bicycle supporter, and you have already installed a number of bad ideas, that no one, not even some cyclists and environmentalists; want. You also haven't learned, and applied; lessons, that Highway Safety Engineers learned, decades ago. I've already seen some ideas; installed, then torn out; because they created more problems than they solved. I could name several "boondoggles", but maybe We should make a list, starting with a "traffic-calming" installation; in Columbus; and Glen Canyon Dam.
So much easier to pipe desalinated water from Mexico then use the brine in those solar power generators that would be most efficient in the local desert.... BTW I thought free markets would prevent us from doing block headed moves like communist Russia, doing things like growing cities in deserts without water.... Government intervention, subsidies, and special favors displacing free markets leads to the stupidest outcomes - thirsty cities in waterless deserts trying to leverage gambling money to steal water resources from the rest of the country & damn all environmental impacts and to the ocean fishermen states like Florida an even internationally countries who would suffer the impacts from diverting Mississippi water impacting the gulf gulf stream current and all the nations from Ireland the UK Africa the Caribbean and central America impacted by the global route of the gulf stream current that the Mississippi river feeds into.
How about instead of buying all that land,we use the median between east and westbound interstates 40 and 70? It's land that the government already owns,so it might make such a big project feasible.
how about dissolving the multi state water agreement and have each state be responsible for it's own water at least until there is no longer a water shortage. it would be especially hard for California but thet do have an ocean and can build desalination plants.
And then eventually the water in the oceans will begin to disappear... What then ... Pump it from one ocean to the next ocean ...FACE IT PEOPLE .. THERE IS JUST TOO MANY PEOPLE ON EARTH AND NOT ENOUGH WATER CONSERVATION HAPPENING TO STOP US FROM ULTIMATELY RUNNING OUT OF WATER... THEY SHOULD OUTLAW ANYONE FROM HAVING GRASS LAWNS ...FIRST MOST OF US ARE IN THE DESERT ANYWAYS... NEXT PUT RESTRICTIONS ON HOW MUCH WATER EVERYONE IS ALLOWED PER DAY...NO EXCEPTIONS ON HOW MUCH MONEY U HAVE... EVERYONE IS EQUAL... THAT WOULD BE A START.
USA, be very careful, California has already stolen the western US for water, a cancer is a terrible thing, to invite the cancer is even worse! " A life long Californian "
I noticed that water from the Colorado river is going to Mexico, how about telling Mexico to stop the illegals at the border and you can get water from us.
You don't need one big ass pipeline to go across the country. Just need many short ones diverting run off from the eastern side of the continental device over to the western slope. It will flow in its own from there.
Water use in Southern Nevada is not the problem, as Nevada is alotted a whopping ~2% of the annual water used from Lake Mead. Moreover, water used in Southern Nevada is capable of being put BACK into the lake due to our position upstream of the lake. Indeed, Las Vegas has consistently used more than its allotment due to recapture of water, netting below its water cap. From a water use perspective, it's actually ideal that people supported by the Colorado River move to Southern Nevada to facilitate this recollection. I certainly am not advocating for more masses of Californians to move here along with their wonky ideas, however... California, by contrast, gets nearly half of the water used annually, a large majority of which goes to agriculture IN THE DESERT. It makes 0 sense to farm water intensive crops (or any crops for that matter) in the driest desert on the continent. Yet, despite their bloviating on climate-related issues, California has taken no action to reduce agricultural activity. Regulatory capture ensures that this asinine economic activity will continue. Nor is their any forseeable political will to stem the (shrinking) tide from within California. Almonds and avocados over real people. This is but one of the myriad externalities that California imposes upon its surrounding sister States. The states east of the Sierra Nevada are in a rain shadow because all precipitation is trapped in that mountain range. Meaning all the rain we otherwise would receive is stored in California. When will California act more responsibly? Your guess is as good as mine. I certainly doubt it will happen before its too late or the federal government forces their hand.
What the he'll is wrong with western water?! Constructing a water squaring fro the Mississippi river is ludicrous. What a total waste of money. What is wrong with the western rivers? We have the Columbia, the Snake, the Russian, the Feather rivers. All rivers that flow unrestricted year around. Maybe it's just too simple to look west to find water. Desalination is regarded too EXPENSIVE. What about construction costs to bring water from HALFWAY across the country? Ever hear of GRAVITY? Aren't those western rivers NORTH of the Colorado? This sounds like one of Bidens brain storms. Does the "BIG GUY" get 10% of those costs?
Desalination is extremely expensive. And the waste salt is toxic, putting it back into the ocean is problematic for many reasons.
Let california’s governor (the new tricky duck) use electricity to charge his car is in desalinate water from the ocean which is not impossible and it wouldn’t take trillions. And a lot less time. United States already desalinate all the water that leaves Arizona on the through the Colorado river to Mexico so Mexico can have freshwater. Because after decades of building the Mississippi California channel the water in the Midwest could dry up as well. I lived in Indiana for 20 years and that part of the US is starting to have a drought as well. So they will build reservoirs for themselves.