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Comment by purplerabbit | Hacker News Reader

I crave an industrial megaproject to solve this. Specifically: A pipeline from the ocean. But alas, only China has a social structure capable of getting projects of this scale done anymore. So I guess I'll keep tracking the AQI and keeping my kids indoors when it's bad.

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I always like the idea of megaprojects and several Utah legislators suggested this. It's kind of a dumb idea, though, when you think about it because the vast majority of Utah's diverted water is going towards farming alfalfa to feed livestock, so we could much more easily solve the problem by just importing these end products from a region that is better suited to their production than a desert.

Or even better eliminating or at least reducing animal agriculture that aside from the ethical, health and global warming concerns, is a massive user of local resources relative to the non animal resources.

Doesn’t scratch the itch, but I will concede that this is a fair point

If you want to do a megaproject, just cover a significant amount of the lake in reflective material. This will reduce evaporation, increasing the lake level. It would be very bad for the ecosystem, though, since it depends on sunlight.

Sounds like the northern part of the lake doesn't have much of an ecosystem anyway, so why not start there?

> Specifically: A pipeline from the ocean.

The environmental cost of building a pipeline 750 miles across the country and then expending all of the energy needed to pump that water would completely outweigh any benefits.

You also don't need ocean water. Salt doesn't evaporate. It's still there. The water could be sourced from anywhere.

They could just buy up water rights from farmers and other heavy users and divert the water in the direction of the lake. A million times easier.

Moving farms to next to the ocean does seem like the far superior option.

It would probably be better in the long run if we all drove less and walked more, then built a 1,000 mile aqueduct from the ocean to (and I can't believe I'm typing this) replenish the Great Salt Lake.

I'm trying to figure out how driving less and walking more would result in the Great Salt Lake getting an extra million acre feet of water into it per year.

One might argue that would accelerate the collapse of the Great Salt Lake because the vast majority of diverted water is used for agriculture and increasing everyone's caloric requirements would result in more agriculture.

Driving cars releases tons of CO2 into the atmosphere (per car). There are 300 million cars on the road in the States. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.

75% of U.S. adults are considered overweight, I would think that walking would first help this problem, as well as be a catalyst to other beneficial habits, including eating less meat and more vegetables, which would further reduce the amount of CO2 released from agriculture, as well as slim people's waistlines.

Ok, but this isn't climate change driven problem. Climate change will keep making this problem harder to manage, but the problem is excessive diversions of water feeding the Great Salt Lake. If climate change were solved tomorrow, this would still be a problem.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be working on climate change, but the solution for this problem must be much sooner and more local than a giant worldwide effort.

I crave more attempts to find a way to live in harmony with the natural world in a way that still supports us all as best as possible.

If, as I've read in other comments here, the problem around Salt Lake is due to man diverting the flow of water to it for their own purposes, I only see diverting ocean water to it as more of the exact same type of hubris that got us to this point.

The US is crisscrossed with gas and oil pipelines, many of them quite long. It’s imagination that constrains us mostly, not technology.

Imagination applies also to how we organize society and “rights” we hold over nature and natural resources. Reforming outdated water law is the true fix no pipeline needed.

There have been some ideas to do this from the Salton Sea to the Gulf of California in Mexico but that is about 125 miles and would still cost billions.

To drain the Salton Sea or replenish it? The Salton Sea was created in its present form from a man-made environmental disaster.

To replenish it. I know it was made by accident but agricultural runoff kept it from drying out. Now it is full of fertilizer and pesticide residue and the farms have gotten better at using water so less flows into the Salton Sea. As it dries up toxic dust clouds are blown over the cities nearby. California is trying to stop the dust. One idea is to fill it with sea water from the Gulf of California from Mexico.

I am not saying this is a good idea, only that it is an idea.

I think the idea is a huge waste, but the Utah State Legislature already considered exactly this in 2022 (building a massive pipeline to the Pacific Ocean).

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2022/05/19/utah-legi... (archived non-paywall version: http://archive.today/GzuUD)

We really should just figure out how to be sustainable. I also think there is a hard reality people don't want to even consider talking about, which is the Southwest US is too overpopulated and overleveraged for the natural water resources available to it.

The southwest isn’t really over populated with people, it’s overpopulated with cows which require tremendous land and water resources.

Disappointing to see you downvoted on hacker news of all places. Cmon, have some ambition.

A bunch of people here have no idea how bad the water crunch is. The oogala has been overdrawn for decades, and is a major source of agriculture water for much of the west and Midwest.

CO, UT, AZ, CA, NV etc all dramatically overdraw the Colorado river snopack and will have a reckoning soon enough. The west is also prone to mega droughts, making the problem much worse

Building a $100bn pipeline to irrigate the west absolutely should happen. We can pump it with miles of solar power, build enormous desalination plants, dramatically increase agricultural productivity and provide water to fight the heating effects of global warming.

The water crunch only seems bad because everybody is trying to maintain the status quo and it's egregiously wasted on things we dont need to. 25% of the Colorado river is used to just grow alfalfa [0]. We over subsidize corn and soy so much we have to invent uses for it. We dont need corn ethanol in our fuel and we dont need to use the precious water in the West to grow alfalfa for Saudi Arabia [1]

[0] https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/04/research-colorado-river-w...

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-ar...

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