Ask HN: California Drought. Why not take water from the states that are floods? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: California Drought. Why not take water from the states that are floods?

2 pointsrgovind14 comments

Because:

(1) There's no existing infrastructure that allows this, and by the time it was built, both the drought and the floods would be long over.

(2) To the extent large scale water distribution infrastructure is reasonably practical, anyway, it probably doesn't involve crossing the continental divide. Which it would have to connect the places in the US actually experiencing flooding to California.

How do you propose to capture and transport the water?

I am not well versed, but I am assuming there are interstate pipelines.

> I am not well versed, but I am assuming there are interstate pipelines.

The nearest thing to interstate pipelines for water are generally rivers (there are canals, but most of even the major canals that I am aware of are intrastate, not interstate.)

Good luck finding either crossing the Continental Divide.

Are any states currently flooded?

Louisiana, all the time.

Source: Resident.

As Americans, we like pipelines, right? Can we make a cross-Southwest pipeline to move some of that water to CA?

Let's start with my backyard! I currently have about 4 inches of water in it's southwest corner.

One drop at a time...

The wholesale price of water is pretty low.

If/when the drought ends, that can make paying for your pipeline difficult.

So you're saying that if the drought doesn't end, I might be able to recoup my expenses? Hmm....

I was trying to avoid making a concrete prediction about the weather while I speculated that it might be hard to obtain capital for such a project (because weather).

To get the water from Louisiana to California, which are on opposite sides of the Continental Divide[1], you'd have to pump it uphill over the Rocky Mountains. That would take a lot of energy. You can see this by looking at this topographical map of the U.S.:

http://www.united-states-map.com/us402112.htm

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Divide_of_the_Amer...

If we had a system to reclaim the energy as it flowed down the other side - like hydroelectric generator to power an electric water pump - it might not be too expensive.

I suppose an alternative - getting a modestly-sized (6 foot diameter?) drill and drilling from mid-Oklahoma to Eastern-Arizona - wouldn't be a lot cheaper. The tunnel would only have to be approximately 1000 miles long.

It's saltwater though, isn't it? California has nearly limitless amounts of saltwater on its own...

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