re: The U.S.'s largest reservoir, Lake Mead, is literally drying up (pictures)

quote:

---

I always thought it would make sense to have a huge pipe from the Mississippi River across the country as a bit of an emergency system for any draught conditions. Could feed the 3-4 major reservoirs/ rivers along the way.

---

This has been looked at many times. The problem is you need a lot of horsepower to get up and over the continental divide. On the lowest elevation routes you are going from net elevation increase of at least 4000'.

And just to get 50 million gallons a day from the Mississippi to California will take about 60,000 horsepower. That is a lot of electricity that we do not have available.

For a scale, the Carrolton Water Treatment Plant in NOLA produces 110 million gallons of water a day. The point being 50 million gallons a day to California is not a lot especially when you factor in the capital and energy costs.

California is better off setting up desalination plants. But they need energy for that too. Nuclear is the solution.