Water Pipeline: What If An Aqueduct Was Built From The Great Lakes To The Southwest?
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The American Southwest is running out of water. And while there are many ways to conserve water for the region and create a more sustainable water ecosystem for decades to come, one of the most discussed is the idea of a water pipeline from the Great Lakes to the Southwest. But while this might be technically feasible, the financial costs and environmental damage would be staggering. Not to mention, of course, that the states and Canadian provinces simply wouldn't allow it. But what if an aqueduct was built from the Great Lakes to the American Southwest?
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The rules here in the Great Lakes region dictate that only areas that are part of the basin (that is, ground water flows to the lakes) are able to take water from the system. Where I live we have Lake Michigan water in our homes. The town 5 miles south of us has to use wells instead, and the water is so poor that most people use bottled water for drinking, and some even use it for bathing and clothes washing. If the rules don't allow this particular town that is only a couple miles out of the Lake Michigan basin to remove water from the lake, rest assured no one involved in the management of the Great Lakes is going to allow the people currently wasting and rapidly depleting the water in the Southwest to destroy our Lakes.
Yeah....BUT....if everyone is so concerned about Lake levels...why do YOU think it's OK to let the Lakes go on a rampage, like they did two years ago, and DESTROY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of shorelines? Those lakes can become wild beasts and letting them destroy property, willy nilly, with out the control of high levels... is as bad as lowering lake levels to supply the South West. Lake Michigan and Lake Huron should be "maintained" at one STANDARD level. Any excess should be gotten rid of by any means necessary INCLUDING selling it to the South West!
@@badguy1481 That still wouldn't be a solution to the problem, because an inconsistent lake level wouldn't be reliable or profitable. You need to be able to guarantee a certain amount of continual running water to be able to invest in infrastructure like building a pipeline from the great lakes to the southwest. The great lakes would essentially need to always be above average to make such infrastructure reliable or profitable. If you're a municipality in the southwest that depends on that pipeline and we go through a decade or more of shortage like we did from 99-2015 in the great lakes then your water source would turn off and you be left without.
@@badguy1481 easy there badguy we can't help people who will not help them selves
@@badguy1481 my god rampaging wild beasts willy-nilly I don't know how we can go on here in Michigan
@@badguy1481 The property that was destroyed belongs to 1%rs boo hoo
When the Southwest sends us Michiganders some 75-degree days in February, we'll talk about giving them some water.
hahaha enough said!
I would blow it up as well I would never let those people out west to get the great lakes water. They don’t deserve any of it and they wasted all of the water that is gone they used to have. Just a bunch of valley girl idiots out there that use like every other word! Likeee omgahhh nooowahhh stopahhh.
The Western desert gets NOTHING from the Great lakes.. They did the numbers, to build enough power plants and having a big enough pipeline, would cost 4 to 6 TRILLION dollars to deliver the amount of water needed to save California alone, not counting the other states like New Mexico and Arizona.. Then there would be the operating costs to pump and maintain. They'll get not a drop, they made the decision to live in a Desert, they didn't know that there isn't very much water in a Desert like climate..??
I learned that in 3rd grade, so lots of Luck California, you get Jack Squat.
It's not up to Michigan. There is very strict international laws on withdrawing water from the Great Lakes
Nah. They can keep them. We get our share of those conditions.
I forgot what it is but the amount of water needed to grow one almond in California is astonishing
I believe it’s one gallon of water per almond.
Yall got an entire freaking ocean, and yet you want to go east to the lakes like why?
@@iamaloafofbread8926 Umm, go ahead and water your plants with SALT WATER. Let us know how it goes!
@@jasonrodgers9063 desalination plants exist
@@doctorcropse2795 True, at VASTLY more cost per gallon. Otherwise, they'd be EVERYWHERE, and this wouldn't even be a QUESTION!
This was a very interesting video, I enjoyed it. I live in Michigan and have my entire life. I personally limit my water use because I know what a process it has to go through before it gets to me. But I am also aware that my location is unique to the rest of the world. I live in the area with the biggest fresh water supply in the world. On that one I consider myself blessed because it's never been of any real concern to me.
Relocating the water seems more of a problem, then relocating people. I'm not saying mass caravans of humanity, but there can be solutions on this. There are 8 states and 2 Provinces (Canadian) that sit in this region. There is a lot of good land and water here.
Consider yourself blessed, up until the masses migrate to your area 🤣
@@johndavis2938 Migrants can be stopped.. Those boys in Michigan wouldn't have a problem doing it either, completely different culture from the West.
Lots of people are "Napping out in the pines", lots.
Please complain to your municipality to stop dumping raw sewage into the Great Lakes. They all do it. Even in Canada, not as bad in Canada as America. But I'm constantly complaining in Canada for them to stop so we can really complain at the Americans and not be hypocrites
I remember reading a book called " The Late Great Lakes". The one thing I vividly remember is a story where a massive southwest aquifer was completely drained due to the insane demand (people insisting on having green lawns and golf courses, pools, etc.) in a region that isn't set up for such things. In steps the Army Corps of Eng to save the day by designing a pipeline to tap into Lake Michigan. It never gained traction and I hope it never does.
it won't. We don't have the tech to pull it off. Moving several million gallons of water a minute would be required, 3/4 miles UP a mountain. Never going to happen. The power grid itself won't support it. All this aqueduct nonsense ignores the simple fact that aqueducts work WITH gravity, not against it. Same with canals. I'm more worried about the unhinged people purposely moving INTO a decades long drought situation, then complaining about it after the fact. Their bad choices isn't anyone's problem but theirs.
Yeah. Green lawns, pools, and golf courses. How evil
@@hippy1002 pretty sure I never referred to these things as evil, just misplaced.
It would be cheaper and faster to build a huge desalination plant instead of our great lakes being raided. People in the southwest choose to live there, so deal with your problems. Hand off the Great Lakes!
Bad idea!
As someone who lives on the great lakes, I would do EVERYTHING in my power to stop this. If the people in the American southwest want our water, they are welcome to move here. We are not going to allow our natural resources to be plundered by people living in the desert who want green lawns and swimming pools.
Except that you don't mind eating the vegetables, fruits, and nuts grown there with that water.
@@sowmitriswamy6718 So, i'm gonna be honest, I'm really not the healthiest human so while this point might work on most people my diet is 90% high fructose corn syrup grown in the Midwest. I honestly can't remember the last time I had a vegetable that wasn't tomato sauce LOL
@@sowmitriswamy6718 fine! We don’t need your food! Besides I grow my vegetables
@@Bodezefah Most people consume California grown food especially its vegetables, nuts, and fruit.
@@sowmitriswamy6718
Everything I eat and drink comes from my own state. Much, if not most of the food grown in California is exported for profit.
As someone from the great lakes, I can tell you that if they start building the pipeline, they'll need to have really good security for the workers and long term security for the pipeline itself.
Don't worry, it'll never happen. There's an international agreement. Canada is part owner of those lakes, they're all connected and it wouldn't matter that all of Lake Michigan is in the US.
Honestly of all the talk about general revolts or full-on guerilla warfare in the US, this would be the real one. The Upper Great Lakes states would straight up take up arms to stop this. The water up there is integral to everything. This could NEVER happen. You would even have National Guards revolting to stop it.
I saw an interesting proposal the other day, related to this. Rather than taking water from the great lakes though, they suggested taking water from flood prone areas prior to the storms(so instead of flooding the water is drained then refilled by the storm). They also suggested reusing oil/natural gas pipelines that are no longer used, which would greatly reduce the costs.
Good idea in theory, but once this pipeline would be built, it would only be a matter of time before it would be misused/overused. All it would take is a large chunk on money to be offered or a change in political power. As someone who lives in Wisconsin, I have ZERO trust that the west coast politicians wouldn’t try to bribe someone to pass some bill afterwords to give more water than we should to them, In order to get said politician some good press/publicity.
@@ScrawnyClownSnatch Well the floods actually cause a lot of damage and climate change is also making extreme flooding events more common(at the same time as more severe droughts). So moving water away is actually a large benefit to those people who would other wise be flooded.
Of course it is possible it could be abused, but also we all live in the same country, so we shouldn't be fighting over water if there are ways to provide for everyone.
We don't actually want to drain lakes, even large ones like the Great Lakes, since that isn't a permanent solution. However being able to move water around from place to place would be useful.
@@Lilitha11 If the main idea is to use it as a way to prevent flooding, there are cheaper ways to do that that don't require making a pipeline straight thru the country and the montans (like the video said, it expensive). There are also other solutions for the west to use to save water that are cheaper as well.
Ideally, this system would only be used on rare occasions where the great lakes area gets to much water. But the truth is, that would not solve the flooding problem. The flooding happens when areas up here get ALOT of rain very fast and the rivers that lead to the great lakes overflow. So unless we somehow attach every river to this system (which is logistically impossible) it woun't solve the problem.
Additionaly I doubt the amount of water we would send to the west in a situation where we have an excess in the lakes, would be enough to solve their lack of water problem as we would not be sending that much in the grand scheme.
As a result, a project like this would just be a 10+ billion dollar project, that doesn't completly solve anything and just introduces a system that would need heavy regulation to ensure it is not misused.
I'd be more interested in giving my tax money to projects that actually solve the problem.
But that is just my opinion. You are allowed your own.
@@ScrawnyClownSnatch Well that is why they suggested we use the pipelines we already have for gas and oil. There are pipelines like that all over the place, so you wouldn't have to build new pipelines in most areas. Obviously you would still have to build some, but it wouldn't require building a new pipeline across the entire country, which would obviously be insanely expensive.
If you look at how much food prices jumped up recently due to the war in Ukraine(since Ukraine produces a lot of food to sell worldwide) just imagine how much food prices will raise in the US if California has to stop all farming. Agriculture is the biggest use of water, so if we have to save water otherways, eventually it is going to be that. It isn't just a western states issue if food prices in the US spike. If California no longer produced food, how high would food prices go up? 5 times? 10? 20? Could there be a famine in the US? Could people actually starve to death? It would certainly be possible.
So we need to figure something out.
@@Lilitha11 the idea of recycling pipelines is a good idea and Iike that, but to my knowledge we still would need to drill thru a mountain to install the pipeline. Either that or take a really long roundabout path that might not save money (just a wild guess though).
As for the food supply issue. To my knowledge, the US tends to avoid importing argacultural goods like produce and wheat in favor of producing it locally, (mostly because it spoils by the time it would come form a place overseas like Ukraine). So the war on Ukrain has actually effected the price of raw materials (like metals etc...) more than food to my knowledge while the food shortage has effected mostly Europe as they are close enough to use Urkrains produce and grain.
So the food price increase has mostly been due to inflation and gas prices as far as I'm aware (at least in the US). That said, I do see you're point that the west coast needs something done.
Coincidentally, I read a report recently that California just cleared the creation of a new MASSIVE reservoir mave from a naturally occurring depression in the land. By the looks of it, they may have a plan in the works.
As a Michigander I can tell you that someone is under
estimating the impact this would have on the Great Lakes. There have been times when there has been concern over lowering lake levels due to drought and lack of rain and snowfall. As hard as this is to believe I remember years ago the State asking Detroiters to curb their water usage.Then there is the international issue with Canada. Perhaps a better idea would be for people not to move to a desert State. Just as its name implies a desert is an arid place, meaning very little precipitation. And for the record, yes, we are extremely protective of our Great Lakes.
Underestimating, not overestimating. They can build desalinization plants like they do in the middle east, but they don't want to because of the "impact" it would have on the marine wildlife off their coasts. But yeah, lets take the Great Lakes. You know how Michigan is a mitten? Well that is my middle finger they are looking at.
Many of those who live there moved from the mid west. So, maybe they should have stayed back east?
No on needs to move "to a Desert State" anymore. There are already 60M there.
They have babies, too!
Not only that, but the same people grow your salads, eggs, meat & wine year round, and produce all through your Winter!
I have lived in Wisconsin, a mile away from Lake Michigan. And ever since like 2008, there’s a Great Lakes compact between all the states bordering the lakes which will forbid a pipeline being built to send water to other states. The southwest has wanted to build a pipeline for water for a decade or two now. Won’t happen, they deserve to shrivel and die for living in a desert and growing highly water intensive crops ( cotton, alfalfa, almonds etc) along with raising cattle too.
1980's lake Michigan was high and same talks. then went to record lows from dry winters how back up. Nature is cyclical. There is also big demands in far suburbs in Chicago area for water from Lake Michigan since the deep wells are getting low/dry. So it is not only a sw issue.
Two years ago a company in Iowa wanted to ship 2 billion gallons of water a year from the Jordan Aquifer out to western states. It was met with incredible resistance and it came to nothing. The backlash to this proposal is only and indicator of how large the backlash would be to building a pipeline from the Great Lakes to the SouthWest.
Yeah you're right
Is that part of the Ogallala aquifer?
As it should. Manage the water you have don't just keep managing it poorly and take from other regions.
we don't own half of the lakes. canada better watch out cause we will be at war with them over water one day before we know it. and there will still be all the people fleeing that area which we NEVER should have tried to inhabit
That company obviously didn't consult with the Iowa state government, but saw it as a get rich gimmick.
Two things you didn't mention regarding Great Lakes water, first, the water level of the Great Lakes rises and falls with the weather. In drought conditions it goes down and in wet times fills up by as much as six feet of difference. There are about 140 commercial ports on the Great Lakes. That is a lot of shipping and a lot of jobs that depend on lake level. Once people outside the Great Lakes Basin start drawing on the water and relying on it, how do you turn off their tap when the lake levels naturally go down? The lakes have gone down about 25 inches since 2020 naturally without any such pipeline as that proposed. Would people accept someone saying, "sorry, you'll just have to wait a few years for the lakes to come back up." Once the tap is open it will be very hard to shut it off. If the natural waterway goes too low, and the ports can't work, what do the people in the Great Lakes region do to ship and receive goods that now go through the ports? I understand the people in the Southwest have jobs and lives and needs, but so do the people in the Great Lakes region. Nothing is gained by sacrificing one for the other.
Second, The American Southwest is a historic drought area on our planet. You can't fix that. To ship water from other parts of the country will only make it possible for more people to live there and increase the demand on scarce resources and the need to move yet more water. If you did use Great Lakes water to try and fix that problem you would only make the demand on Great Lakes water that much worse. The Southwest region must live on their available resources and people should not continue to move to an area where the land doesn't have the carrying capacity. There are other places in the country available for people to move without the cost and environmental damage posed by such a pipeline.
All facts.
People in California, Arizona and all the other states that suck the Colorado River dry don't care about anyone else. They deserve that water.
Some thoughts, living in MI, I know that we would never give up our water, period. The problem in the SW is directly related to the population and their consumption. Although I don't recall that you mentioned it, the Great Salt Lake has similar problems and it does not require fresh water to fix, i.e. it could use the salt water that is geographically closer to it. I could see a salt water pipeline being feasible (although probably not financially possible) and inland desalination plants powered by solar energy, which would be practical but expensive.
Same here if this were to ever happen I will find a way to blow it up. I would never let Westerners especially Californians take the water out of our Great Lakes and waste it like they do. They make me sick already. Most of them make me sick obviously there’s a small number of great people that aren’t idiots out there
They could desalinate water with the 450 nuclear power plants in America. Billions of gallons a day go out the cooling towers as water vapour. But I guess that's being too smart to do
@@highstreetkillers4377 There are only 92 operating reactors, not 450.
Speaking as a Canadian on the great lakes I feel the mood it pretty much the same on both sides of the boarder in this region... Never going to happen.
good video though. you explained it well
I agree, I would never want to see water transferred from the Great Lakes to the S.W. But, I think the S.W. should start banning the "soft" Ag it produces to feed Canadians & people around the Great Lakes at the same time.
Yep I live in Wisconsin and feel precisely the same way. When I first heard about this proposal I was quite incensed by it.
@@kidkanji5295 True
The US largest Iron ore supply come from Wisconsin by ship. You can't supply ore to Gary Works, in Gary, Indiana, on the shore of Lake Michigan by truck or train.
Its the largest steel mill in North America.
Plus GL shipping goes to the Atlantic east coast.
South west mess to have farms and large cities in a desert.
@@dmannevada5981 you do realize all the states around the Great Lakes can grow food also I know plenty of farmers around here that grow what California doesn't simply because it's more profitable if Cali banned those imports theirs enough farmers to pick up the slack. Also the water is cheaper for them so ya go ahead and try that. You get outside any major city in Ohio for example it's farm land as far the eye can see.
@@LavitosExodius Every freak"n person from that region says the same thing. How many times do I have to comment that the midwest can't grow most soft Ag after Sept and before June...it can't be done!!!!!! Hello!!!! Good God, do you pay attention????
Only the growing districts of the Colorado has the climate to grow soft Ag year round, with it's most productive time being Oct-Apr, when the midwest is shut down producing soft Ag. It's also why over 90% of America's fruits & veggies are produced Oct-Apr along the Colorado.
Do you get it!
Enough already, you don't know anything about horticulture, or the reasons why, how or when Ag can be produced in America.
Good grief.
My mother is geologist and has specialized in ground water. She is a firm believer that the water in the Great Lakes was a one time gift from receding glaciers during the last ice age in North America. We should be very careful when considering how to manage this incredible gift.
I personally think they represent yet another reason why the region will see a population increase in the future.
Our cold winter Is the only reason this I about the West Not the east
The Great Lakes dried up into a chain of dead seas connected by a river 7,000 years ago and scuba diving archeologists have found caribou traps in areas that are now covered by over 100 feet of water. 15,000 years ago northern Utah was covered by a lake larger than Lake Michigan and you can still see the ancient shoreline on the Wasatch Mountains surrounding Salt Lake City and the airport and city would have been covered by around a thousand feet of water.
Especially with rising temperatures, it may even a comfortable place to live in 50 years during winter.
@@bobsmith6079 ummm more like 150 million years
yep, and when people move in, housing prices go UP ansd traffic congestion goezs UP.
ask all the cities where large numbers of people moved there.
I learned recently that there are a few desalination plants in California. Maybe having more of them over time could be more feasible if the technology advances. Even so, it will probably take a lot of different solutions to work with the water crises that's in the Southwest and through much of the rest of the country if not much of the world.
Those plants & upkeep cost more than the pipeline.
I personally wouldn’t mind seeing California go into crisis mode about water. Maybe they would finally do some rethinking about how/where they should be spending their $400 billion/year budget. Desalination plants instead of wind farms…. i.e. - water to drink vs forcing electric cars down people’s throats.
@@TheMrPeteChannel So what, that's the price you pay living in a Desert with extreme over population. That area was self sustaining with water and agriculture until the 1990's only because of industrial technology developed in the last century. Those areas have been minimally populated because of the lack of resources throughout history. Thats why populations have always lived in areas where food and water were able to sustain them. .
If we had Free Energy, then we could have as much desalination as we want; we could turn the Sahara (and the US southwest) into a garden. And Free Energy actually does exist, but somebody benefits too much from all of us having to pay them for oil, gas, and electricity, noamsayin'?
Question: instead of tapping into an existing lake, why not setup pipelines from flood zones? in other words: setup pipes to divert flood water from one area to a "dry" or drought area - that way, you address two problems at the same time.
To hell with that idea! Draining the Great Lakes so idiots can grow grass in the desert cannot be allowed to happen. Desalinate Ocean water, it's right there!
But idiot's around the Great Lakes are stealing water from people of the S.W.!
They're growing your food most likely so this kind of comment strikes me as ignorant.
@@hammerhand5059 That's a negatory there hammer hand. California's three biggest things start with W.
@@gorkyd7912 no they don't last time I was at the grocery store in the midwest most of it was locally grown or imported from China. Yes I look because I specifically don't buy California products. Also he was not wrong California's 3 biggest crops are indeed Dairy, Grapes and Almonds don't try to say negatory either that is directly off California's Ag site. Also Hammer is also correct most Midwesterners will happily pay the extra to buy local so we don't have to hear the but they grow your food argument.
@@hammerhand5059 Along with about 80-90% of most other varieties produced and consumed by you only a daily basis. Know what you're talking about before commenting.
Geoff, sending Great Lakes water anywhere is a non-starter. We who live in the Great Lakes region cherish the unique natural phenomenon that is the Great Lakes. Diverting water away from the region would only serve to compromise this natural ecosystem. As you have said, the Lakes are protected by international treaty with Canada and I, for one, cannot think of any plausible scenario that might serve to justify sending this water anywhere.
I agree with you 100 percent. Thankfully we have the Great Lakes Compact and Canada to ensure thieves can not destroy one of the great water sheds in the world. Never trust anyone that wants only a little bit of water, because it would be like letting the weasel in the hen house. Just look how they manage their own water assets. As for crops, Ohio has a bumper crop of corn this year, tomatoes, peppers, and fruit trees are full. I prefer to keep our water and grow our own crops. Want a war, try to build a GL pipeline and steal water.
What if you could not get food that has to be grown in the dessert southwest ? Would you rather buy it form south of the border where they are free to use pesticides that are banned in the USA ?
@@tedwalker1370 I would do what my Amish neighbors do, would do without rather than trade water for it. How about you can have all the water you want at $5 a gallon. How much you want?
@@tedwalker1370 That food should never have been grown in the desert. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples managed water responsibly in that region and even grew crops that could handle the extreme conditions. Now, all that is grown is vast monocultures of crops that require gross amounts of water to produce. The whole reason this drought is happening is because the region's water use is awful. The watershed has been ruined because of industrial farming, water waste, golf courses, suburban developments with lawns, etc. In California, they have managed to drain an entire lake for farming. I live on the Great Lakes, they are beautiful, and the American southwest will not drag our lakes down with them
@@tedwalker1370 We would stop exporting as much of the food we do grow. That being said, good luck on dealing with starvation.
Some say oil pipelines can go thousands of miles, so why not water? Reason is that hydrocarbon products like gasoline sell for dollars per gallon -- while water sells for only fractions of a cent per gallon, one-thousandth the value for the same volume. It's not economical to transport that much that far without huge subsidies that obscure the true cost. Besides construction, there's pumping energy that will be most of the cost, it can't be all gravity flow. The southwest can recycle and reuse wastewater, capture rainwater & stormwater, use drip irrigation on crops, cover canals to prevent evaporation and line them to prevent percolation. All of that will deliver more water at less cost.
When I was living in Texas we got torrential rain and flash flooding sometimes. At the time I was thinking, we should collect all this water and send it to California and the Southwest where they actually need it. Maybe a water pipeline/aquaduct from Texas to the Southwest would make more sense than one from the Great Lakes to the Southwest. Also this route could bypass the Rocky Mountains, making it easier to construct.
I'm seeing a lot of self-identified Great Lakes states residents stamping their feet and saying that they'll never let their water go to the Southwest. Great to know that they're so unwilling to help out their fellow Americans in need. We'll all remember this the next time your region is wrecked by massive blizzards. That's not to say that the Southwest doesn't have to change. No more huge lawns and alfalfa farming. If you want to grow crops don't do it in a freakin desert, for chrissakes. But the concept of taking water from an area that has too much of it and sending it to an area that doesn't have enough of it is a no-brainer.
Those states are rapidly losing population anyway. Better to move that water to places people actually want to seem to live.
@@danielkelly2210 That's the other thing I was thinking. I saw one comment saying, if the people in the Southwest want Great Lakes water they can live in a Great Lakes state. I was thinking, where do you think all those people in the Southwest came from in the first place?
I drove through Utah recently and my jaw dropped. Was 100 degrees outside and driving through the desert there were green fields with water spewing all over them in the afternoon at the hottest part of the day. I farmed for quite a few years and watering during the day was a big no-no. Couldn't tell if they were being negligent or ignorant but I can tell you alot of that water is being wasted atleast in the area I drove through.
I live in Michigan. If the rain doesn't water the grass, I don't care if it is green. We respect the water. There was a recent chemical spill and the people are already calling for the heads of the company. You don't waste water, you don't mess with the water, and you don't abuse it.
They don't respect nature. They will get what they deserve. (Dust)
Agribusiness. They only care about the bottom line.
Piping water to a desert is insane to me, it's best to just move out.
To make it even worse, they're growing and irrigating alfalfa fields mostly. Ridiculous.
As someone who lives about 3 miles from Lake Erie and previously lived about 150' from it: Any proposal like this is absolutely unacceptable. It's not just "ooh, it's pretty", it's our water supply, important to our economy, and enables our regional climate to function. We're also well aware that when municipalities started tapping the Colorado, everyone then said there was plenty of water and they'd never run out, and now look where they are.
If you want to partake of our water supply, move here so you're sending most of the water back into the lakes.
I live in Western NY, we generate a lot of truly clean electricity with that water as well…
Although I wouldn’t miss the lake effect snow much, lol
No hate but Waukesha already takes our water….
In your video you acknowledge the effects of climate change on the West Coast it is indeed getting more heat waves and hotter but if you take the time to look at the effects on the East Coast the atmosphere is holding more moisture and causing it to rain on eastern states longer and more frequently this is causing flooding to become more common on the East Coast So imagine this instead of trying to take water from the Great Lakes one source that is to say. we make a more elaborate system that is connected to various rivers and some lakes on the East Coast Then when it rains more frequently and starts to hit flooding conditions in that area a switch could be Flipped opening up a water pipeline to take the excess water to where it would be needed more thus stopping the Flood From happening and allowing the excess water to be transported to the western states I suppose this is more of a water pipe network then just a simple water pipeline I think it's the best long term solution the western states get the water they need and the eastern states that are being hit with more rain and flooding will no longer have increasing Flooding events. I would also like to make it clear that I do agree that Salt Lake City and the other cities and states in the western states need to manage their water better then what they currently do also I don't know why So many people think the only solution for a water pipeline would be the Great Lakes sure on the surface that seems like the most obvious solution because it's in plain sight but like you pointed out in the video it's not the best long term solution however this water pipeline network I mentioned earlier would be one of the best long term solutions if you think about it for a little bit and do some of the research on climate change not just affecting the West Coast but also the East Coast you'll see my point. / Also on a side note between 2030 and 2040 Florida is doomed as they are the state that will be damaged the most from rising sea levels.
The desert needs to suck it up and manage water better. "Moisture farming" is literally a thing, and it needs to be done! Agriculture needs to be reduced DRAMATICALLY here too! It's just not acceptable to be farming foods that have high water demands.
Even if it was feasible to send water from the Great Lakes to the Southwest, I don't think it would ever be enough. You have people down there who waste literally hundreds of thousands of gallons of water on superfluous things like watering lawns, golf courses, and growing crops that extremely water intensive; all despite the water shortage as it is. If you suddenly give them access to millions of gallons of Great Lakes water, they're just going to waste it too.
Indeed. There's nothing essential about grass or trees for the sport of golf, any more than tennis or baseball. It's a rank and unsustainable display of status.
Farmers in the Great Lakes states, too, should be incentivized to grow almonds on their own land. People here eat almond croissants too. In the last 8 years we have had more than enough rain for it. (The level of Lake Michigan was very high at Christmas 2019 ... Wisconsin's east-shore beaches all but disappeared)
As a Wisconsinite, I can tell you all of the states that border the lakes would tell anyone trying to get the water to eat dirt. Like you say in the video, EXTREMELY unpopular among the people, we are very protective of our lakes. We would rather the southwest shrivel and die before we hand over our great lakes.
What if the lakes were about to flood the surrounding areas and turn all the neighbouring cities into unlivable swamps, like the new orleans bowl problem. Would you wanna give extra water to southwest in that situation? To protect your cities?
What a cheesy post.
@@brucefromaz7708 youll never get a drop, people will die before your evil reached devils get a drop. Sinerally minnesota
In January 1972, I went to Tucson, AZ for the first time. At that time, it had 55,000 people. NW of town was a fenced off area, with keep out and danger warnings hanging on a chain link fence, around maybe 160 acres. I asked someone about that, I was told the Aguifer had been pumped out and the ground was collapsing. Humm. 1972. And people had green grass lawns.
I did see one thing that impressed me. A new housing development went up and as I drove through it. One house had a front yard that had a couple of catus in it but the rest was two inches of pea gravel. And a worker was spraying the pea gravel with a green dye. Wow. The perfect yard. No maintenance. Water use? None. Except for maybe, an eight ounce glass of water for each catus. Once a year. If you feel like it. Otherwise? Hey, you were good to go. Northerners go to the desert, plant all kinds of stuff they have in the north, water a grass front yard and now wonder, ‘how can we be out of water’. And throughout history, we know the SW USA has had multiple 50 to 80 year droughts. This is only year 22 of a drought.
You want to live in the desert? You build desalination plants. They talked about that back in the early 1960’s. And did nothing about it. Now, of course, they’ll want the rest of us to pay for those plants. To which I respectfully reply, “F U”!
San Diego has a desalination plant that provides 5% of San Diego's water. Tucson population in 1980 was 240,000 and now it's 550,000
You’d be happy to see that all the new development does NOT allow grass lawns. Water is so expensive now that only the wealthiest would consider having a real lawn, anyway. I see a lot of it in Phoenix, though, but not so much Tucson. They also don’t allow street lights in newer developments and only special dimmer household outdoor lights.
@@RobertGolden1952Tucson is in pima county and has over 1 million people
@@RobertGolden1952 San Diego's building another one, so Im good til 2045.
Many solutions to drought are available to us. Israel makes use of desalination on a large scale. They also have developed irrigation techniques which are miserly with water yet grow an astounding amount of crops.
As someone who grew up near Lake Michigan and still currently living 5 minutes from the lake, there is no way in hell we are willing to divert any of our Great Lakes water to the western US. 😅
Hence the pact to protect the Great Lakes. We need to preserve them. Plus they are vital shipping routes as well for large ships and such.
The states that surround the Great Lakes are the only states that get to use them for drinking water. And even then we limit it to towns and cities that are within the Great Lakes water shed area. So basically any town more than 50 miles from the lakes are out of luck for the most part.
My town has Lake Michigan water as it's main source. Just like Chicago does. But my town is right on the lake shore. 🙂
I love to see all the laker folks so proud and defensive over our lakes
Where do you think a lot of food you "midwesterners" eat comes from? Central Valley, California grows plenty of food that is transported east and all over the world. It's not your water but the planet's water and can be used however it wants to by the planet and its inhabitants. We're all on this rock (boat) together...
@@eep-squared bel8ve or not most stores here will buy from locals long befor sourcing from Cali. We grow far superior foods on quality not quantity. We will starve long befor we come off the waters that feed us here personally. Your best bet is stop thinking money is the solution. We don't want your money for water. We'd keep the water and we are in the world's best fruit belt, it may be seasonal but it's why we canned in the fall growing up we learned to endure the winters cause it produces some of the best tasting food I'll ever eat. Besides why don't y'all come an learn whe we are the great lakes states and why we won't let you have it. Our natural wonder is exactly that ours as in the collective people that live around it and will be damnded if we let it go to some desert to dry up. We won't starve cause you don't get water. we will use our own ability to sustain our way of life. We were farmers long befor you had a State or a town. We didn't move to the desert nor our we saying you can't come here. Just the water isn't flowing your way anytime soon. As for the Mississippi good luck they get a lot more hostile over there river and it only get worse the more you push an pry at them
@@MrDepodot7 sorry for your loss but Great Lakes water isn't for sale
@@MrDepodot7 Those States literally have like 5 people that live in them though. LOL! 🤣 We have 34 million people around the Great Lakes. (55 million for the megapolis) Hence we are the largest bidder. 😉
As someone studying water in the Colorado Basin, I've never heard this proposed. What I have heard suggested is "taking water from the Mississippi", but the actual implementation of that would be more along the lines of canals taking Missouri River water for the parts of Colorado on the east side of the great divide, instead of taking water over the Rockies from within the Colorado Basin and putting it into the Mississippi Basin like is currently done. (Most likely this would be paid for largely by the lower basin states, effectively purchasing a greater share of the water) This is a more basin-centric model of water usage and would make a noticeable impact, but isn't really a solution in itself.
The real problem is the many non-Colorado Basin parts of states using huge amounts of Colorado River water. Utah Valley and the Salt Lake Valley, the Front Range of Colorado, Los Angeles, San Diego, etc. are all outside of the Colorado River Basin, but all have massive aqueducts to them carrying Colorado River Water. The Colorado River has plenty of water for the basin- but we've chosen to divvy it up by political boundaries using prior appropriation doctrine instead of hydrologic boundaries, resulting in the current unsustainable situation.
Problem is local administration of the resource, if it was a federal pipeline and reservoir system, you wouldn't see this. The Fed needs to use their interstate commerce laws to control it.
The Phoenix-Scottsdale-Mesa metro area has been at the forefront of water management for over one hundred years. Much of the water for this region comes not just from the Colorado River but from the Salt River Project and its series of dams north and northeast of the city that were put in place as far back as the 1920s. The Verde River and Salt River flow into Metro Phoenix. All of these lakes created by the dams are at 100% capacity as of today. For the past few weeks, water has been released from these dams downstream to replenish groundwater. This actually happens more often than one would think.
First time I've heard of anyone proposing taking water from the great lakes to the southwest. The active proposals are to bring water from the Mississippi River, which is a shorter distance and involves fewer geographical barriers.
Nevertheless, the evident solution to the water situation in the southwest is, first, to recognize that the desert is not a good place to be growing most crops. Second, the really large source of water is the ocean; nuclear-powered desalination ought to be investigated. But that requires us to discard our prejudices against nuclear power generation.
Accaully desalination is the answer.
But California refuses to do this.
Yet they steal the water from the Colorado.
I say pull it from the Gulf and pipe it right next to the Rio Grange.
This way there is less height to move it up. ( only about 4000 feet)
Tap El Paso into it as well with a clause.
That they are to stop taking water from surrounding areas.
From El Paso go next to I-10 to Phoenix.
Then north to Flagstaff then to Winnemucca.
And DONT LET CALIFORNIA have any of it.
This will give water to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Neveda.
Don't get me wrong. I believe in water management. But some areas have lost water to other areas.
Its not the areas that lost waters fault. It the pigs in areas like El Paso. That stole it.
50 years and the water table dropped 200 feet due to EL Paso.
That is water in the 1950 was at 300 feet down. Now it over 500 feet to water.
And it's not coming back, because they drained it, and keep draining, a basin.
Oh and that not global warming. Its too many people in an area.
And there are many other desalination system than nuclear.
But I'm not opposed to nuclear also being used.
It involves fewer political barriers as well, like Canada saying no way. But the real barrier is the Rockies
Dude one sudden irreversible climate change is what is happening. Just look around you. What will that mean? Abrupt collapse of civilization absofucinlutely could be, lol! So worse case scenario, imagine 90% of people gone, don’t care what “you” think the possibility of that happening is. I care about those 10% that are workin their butts off to survive in that strange new world the fossil fuels industry gave us! Just when they think they might make it your world kicksemintheass with a near by not decommissioned nuke plant melting down! Think of the difference in Nagasaki and Chernobyl the latter still being a wasteland, where as Nagasaki being rebuilt a few years later! Melt downs very, very bad and every plant that is not properly decommissioned will melt down! So no, fuck no not even if the odds are a thousand to one, sudden irreversible climate change moves exponentially faster now that 400ppm CO2 was breached! Yes we are talking millions of years ago when it naturally happened shit hit the fan fast even though back then took hundreds of thousands of years for CO2 to go from 200ppm to 400ppm once it reached that it became unbearable real fast, just another degree or two and those without air conditioning will soon not have the energy necessary to sweat. Unfortunately when you stop sweating you die! Funny how few deaths it takes to collapse civilization! It’s an exponential domino effect which is what makes the climate deniers so absofuckinlutly dangerously insane! Unless you don’t mind the demise of the human race! And no anyone waiting for the rapture shouldn’t even be allowed to make any long term decisions about theirselves!
@@TheLosamatic 90% of the population gone would be a good thing.
And there is no change in climate.
Thats a hoax.
I don't know. Maybe you are just believing lies those hippies are telling, because you are young.
But climate change is a hoax.
What is real is an explosion of population in areas that can't take it.
Utah is considering piping in sea water from the Pacific Ocean to refill the Great Salt Lake. Arid-zona is much closer to the sea than Utah is. It seems like they could spend some time thinking about a desalination project. They could even power it via solar.
Probably should've done that 20 years ago
The economics of such a plan are completely untenable. The elevation changes in getting the water over the Sierras alone would prohibit such a project. Oh and don't forget the energy for the desalination of that water. The total energy consumption would be gigantic.The math for such a project simply does not work. Solar energy is great but it's just not going to be nearly enough.
The math for LA aqueduct works only because it is powered entirely by gravity and the water is already fresh. Not only that but due to the geography of the Central Valley, there was no significant tunneling required so it was relatively cheap to build (considering the distances involved)
@@russellthorburn9297 augment it with wind farms then. Wind much more effective. Bore a tunnel through the sierras and use that instead of a pipeline.
I don't get why they don't use the 450 nuclear power plants America has to desalination water. I guess that'd be too smart to capture all the water evaporated out the cooling towers
@@highstreetkillers4377 I do. Because we only have 92 nuclear reactors in operation, not 450, and the vast majority of them are east of the Mississippi, making them effectively useless for such a project.
It's actually very simple as to why we shouldn't do this. These lakes were created by massive pressure incurred by glacial activity. The depths of the bases of these lakes i.e. the bottom are actually maintained by the sheer vast weight of the standing water. If you start draining the lakes the base of the lakes you will start a cascading rise of the bases of the lakes. In a relatively small amount of time the lakes would disappear.
Great presentation! I agree with your summary, they should be able to reuse their water, as we do in Florida.... it is a crying shame, that cities and counties across the country are not utilizing water reclamation - water reuse. 1970's gave us the USEPA and the Clean Water Act ...... taking the treatment of water to an advanced level is minimal and the beneficial reuse is a win - win!
People rise to the level of expectations placed upon them in my opinion. As a California native who has lived in LA and San Diego for nearly 40 years, I am absolutely opposed to the idea of such a project. The citizens of the desert southwest need to accept the reality of our situation and regulate our use of water accordingly. This also includes industry and agriculture most emphatically! When I moved to San Diego 24 years ago the first thing I did was rip out the lawn and plant a cactus garden. For all these many years my bi-monthly water bills report that my property uses 75% less water than the average household in my zip code. To my mind this proves that the population of my area has a lot of room to improve on how they use water on their respective properties. And just so you all know, I even have a koi pond!
I'm pro-xeriscaping, too. My husband is obsessed with lawns 🙄. So we compromised when I showed him that reducing our lawn size with gravel/rock borders made the lawn easier to cut and keep up. It also reduced the amount of water required to irrigate the lawn. Wish I could get rid of the front lawn altogether and plant some dwarf trees and drought tolerant perennial flowers and bushes....😔
@@AStri-zg5xc American's obsession with lawns isn't going away anytime soon. Here in Michigan it's its own pandemic lol
As a hydrologist once stated with the BOR..."worrying about lawns is like your doctor worrying about your paper cut while having a gun shot wound to the chest". Watering lawns barely measure in the scheme of things and it wouldn't make one once of difference if every lawn was removed.
When the BOR's own data shows that over 80% of the water is used to irrigate crops, crops that contribute to the food supply of over 700 million people worldwide, then you get a sense of the true gravity of the issue. Removing your lawns saved on your water bill, it changed nothing as far as the dynamic of the Colorado's water issues.
@@AStri-zg5xc Did you listen to the stats? 74% of the water is used for ag. not lawns....so I guess we cut off that food supply?? Build the damned pipeline and build it now and stop carping about grass and cutting back.
This video is wrong the best way to get water to southwest is to reverse a river in Oklahoma to use it to build a shorter pipeline to southwest only pump water from the horrible seasonal floods on the Mississippi that way no one is losing any water because it flood water that would flood st Louis Memphis and New Orleans u people out west got to get out of fantasy land thinking ur water problem can be completely solved by using less water u can't save what u don't have u guys still need water coming in from somewhere else or hope the drought ends soon because I don't know if u guys in the west know the definition of drought but it means no rain so u can't save water if ur not getting any water
It could never be, Canada would never allow such a huge ecological disaster by draining the Great Lakes. Not gonna happen.
@Account NumberEight You should read the definition of draining
@Account NumberEight You just proved the only one being dramatic here is you.
As a Canadian our military is no match to the U.S. this water problem will become a national security issue . Which translates or means the wealthy will get Canadian water one way or another. Just a thought could population be a factor in this crisis.
@Account NumberEight nope. Look at the colorado river and tell me im dramatic.
And you stupidly answered your own question...Troll.
@@rickszabo4312 so just give it to the Americans because they have bigger guns?
I dont think so.
Theyll have to come and get me before ill let them damage an ecological system like the Great Lakes.
Here is something to consider:
When the Flint Water Crisis happened, it came out that the Granholm administration had made a deal with Nestle to take 400 million gallons of water from the Great Lakes per day. Not monthly, not yearly, but daily.
Yet, Nestle would not cease production to make bottled water for Flint. You know who did? Anhauser Busch in St. Louis. They literally stopped making beer so that canned water could be shipped directly to Flint.
Given this, I do not see fresh water going from any lake via aqueduct to the Southwest, simply because of Chicago and Detroit, two major cities on the shores of the Great Lakes that would definitely put up a fight. Further cities include Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo. And that doesn't even include Canadian cities that are along the shores of the Great Lakes.
On a philosophical level, I myself think that the Upper Midwest should not be responsible for the mismanagement of water in the Southwest and in California. And if forestry and land management is any indication, anybody who thinks that the Southwest and West Coast is more worthy to have the water of the Great Lakes than the people who live around the lakes, is delusional and out of their minds. I can honestly and forthrightly say that it is not the responsibility of the people around the Great Lakes to take care of the people in the Southwest, when those people never assisted in helping the residents of Flint.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers a pipe line 30 foot in diameter could be built from the Columbia River to Southern California. A tunnel boring machine would be used to bore a hole under the Pacific Ocean. There would be enough water to support the agriculture in Southern California and build all the way to Nevada and Arizona.
Senator Paul Simon of Illinois spoke of this in the late 1980’s. Overpopulation, overuse of water for expanding ag and cheaper water in a desert than the Midwest with just one drought away from a crisis. Amazing how he predicted this very scenario.
Paul Simon was a good Senator. He gave me my Service Academy nomination.
You know that higher CO2 in the air reduces the water needs of plants.
It's not amazing. My Dad was a hydrologist/geologist in New Mexico. I remember conferences in the late sixties where it was the main topic of discussion.
The Colorado River Compact addressed this fear in 1922. It was common long before that.
As a Minnesotan, I'm going to mention the fact that superior has had it's draughts. It has been dangerously low to the point of stopping shipping from so low water the docks were at risk. (It was a few years ago)
Also, since the pipeline was hundreds of billions by OP's projections, just build desalination plants. It costs are not the issue, but results... Pour money into solutions that could work and would have far less negative impact on others.
@@JBMuffinman187 Amen!
I’m from Michigan. Don’t sell water to these Fucks! Stand together !
As someone born in the southwest people used to have rocks in their lawns and maybe some cacti. Some people painted rocks or used astro turf if they wanted that green lawn look. Then in the early 2000's things started to change. And now Sedona, and Scottsdale are practically LA east. LA was in a drought and almost no one stopped watering their lawns. Those same people are now moving to AZ. This is why there is a water shortage
This is what happens when you live in a place where that many people were never supposed to live. The desert southwest is called a desert for a reason
It would be significantly cheaper to build both a dedicated power plant and reverse osmosis system (like that in Antioch, Israel) to pull desalinize water from the Pacific Ocean.
A project like you describe was just cancelled by the state of California. The concern was that removing all the salt from the water, and then dumping it back in the Pacific would create a local area of high salinity, and kill a lot of fish/wildlife in the area. The project included a ling diffusion pipe to deep water, to prevent this from becoming a major concern, however, the California Environmental assessment said it wouldn't be enough.
There are many people and businesses who depend on near shore fisheries to make a living, so this isn't an easy fix, but with the ongoing drought, I think cancelling that project may have been a mistake.
@@bskec2177 It isn't just the higher salinity of the effluent from the plant, it is the higher temperature of it as well.
Though if they kept the concentrated salt water, let it dry out to salt and sold the sea salt then both issues would be completely mitigated.
That plant in Israel processes 640,000 cu. meters of water per day...while that is a LOT of water in terms of domestic needs (170 million gallons) it is a spit in the ocean in terms of agriculture (500 acre-feet/day).
For perspective, the Central Valley Water System (i.e. not including So Cal) handles 40 million acre-feet per year.
All of the world's desalination plants together (Saudi has the most I think) are not even close to enough to replace California's demands on the Colorado River. Good first step maybe.
@@gorkyd7912 There isn't going to be a single solution to a problem this big, it's going to need a series of small steps.
Firstly, the Great Lakes are a shared water resource of Canada and the US. The US can't unilaterally siphon water from it because it's not theirs to take. Secondly, bulk water exports from the Great Lakes (and Canada) are illegal ....and for good reason. Thirdly, the US southwest doesn't get to destroy the eco-system of another region or country to replenish its own.
even if the main water usage in the southwest (done with water FROM the southwest) is to grow produce sold to people in the midwest? the argument of permanent water removal seems to hold less weight when you think about that fact.
@@karLcx no it doesn't. We now realize what causes ecological disasters and this would be one in the making. Once damaged an ecology is lost and that is forever. To continue to grow crops in the southwest, people might all have to leave in order to save what water is there for the crops. But I guess no one has thought of that solution....it's all drain this, desalinate that....
@@AStri-zg5xc sorry, you don’t get a say since the southwest is clearly on their own.
@@AStri-zg5xc You should stop eating if you so believe in your comment, or else you're a hypocrite. Karl Lehtonen has you cold.
@@dmannevada5981 move the agriculture east to where the water is. The Great lakes Mississippi River basin and the southeast can grow those crops. Leave a few farms out west that won't use as much water.
Why are they growing cotton and oranges in Arizona when you can do that in Florida?
I have had similar ideas. The quick and dirty one is piping excess ground water from South Florida to a distribution point out West. This water flows to the Gulf of Mexico. And no, I am not talking about robbing it from the Everglades. But my truly grandiose idea is to build navigable canals from California to the East coast. It would be a water conveyance to provide water not only to drought areas, but would drain potentially flooding regions also. As a navigable canal network, it would make transportation of goods for agriculture and manufacturing more efficient, and create a whole new cruise ship genre. Asian tourists would enter at California, get off the boats periodically at emerging river boat towns, spend money, get back on another boat to do the same down the line. Eventually they would be spit out of the East coast and could continue to another continent. The canals could be shaped like meandering rivers to make them more aesthetically pleasing.
Great!
Presumably they have tried Olive trees, Moringa trees, and other drought hardy crops. Of course, there is likely more discussion regarding ways to channel heavy rains to water reservoirs in need.
Thank you for sharing informative videos!
Would like to see an video on a pipeline from the Pacific Ocean to the southwest states using desalination.
Desalination seems like a good idea to solve the water problems in California, but I'm curious why I don't hear about it as a solution?
I came up with that solution as well. It's crazy they ain't thinking about it. The water goes, and it goes back out. Endless recycling period.
Instead pump north from the gulf of California. Let the sun evaporate from an inland salt water lake. It would take about 25% of Arizona.
@@jessicag123 It isn't the cheapest source of water because of the energy needs. It is energy dependent and the oil and gas companies don't want people to realize that solar energy could fix the issue and replace them at the same time.
Desalination makes more sense.
I think the little pacific project is a great idea. At the end you put in a thorium reactor which can desalinate the water. You get fresh water, sent to lake mead, and power as the end result.
You do know that desalinate the ocean water requires a lot of power and it's very expensive. It goes against Global Warming. Where we are trying to cut consumption of power the desalinate plant would reverse this.
@@waynerice4918 Nuclear power is dirt cheap. Also the water you get in return is worth money.
@@mistersir3020 nuclear power has never been cheap. Hyped cheap in fact they said it would be so cheap it wouldn’t register on meters, that certainly did not work out. Every plant they built had billion dollar cost over runs! Just more BS from a troll!
@@TheLosamatic Every project overruns its budget. And you mostly have to pay distribution.
No point in sending desalination water to Lake Mead. Use the water locally to offset consumption from the lake, so there's less removed from Lake Mead. Not to criticize too harshly--lots of people make this mistake--but failing to notice that your suggestion moves water hundreds of miles at great expense only to turn around and move it back to near where it started does suggest not having thought the process through in depth.
Agree 100% that the primary solution is better water management in the SW. But it's also fun to point out another logistical issue in transporting water from the great lakes (elevation ~600 ft above sea level) to cities in the SW like Albuquerque or Denver which are a mile above sea level.
I'm from Los Angeles and that is a terrible idea ecologically, economically, politically, and socially. Much of the water issues in these states can be resolved just by improving the water irrigation, purification, and storage practices. That oil pipeline is a disaster waiting to happen. The aqueduct may only be transporting water, but its not worth the investment.
Does anyone remember back in the late 80's when the Mississippi was so dry that you could almost walk across it? Barges were stuck in the mud everywhere. Don't send water to the southwest from the Mississippi.
Did they have ebb flow lochs in place then? There are dams in place now keeping water tables relatively steady.
Westerner here, dont support, southern parts and states are vastly less important than the few trees we have left. That water aint going north of sac and sf its not helping. You think you can allow all the people in to use up resources when in the end you contaminate all of it from the top down. Besides, people are moving from the great lakes because they are ruined already.
I also remember 2012 where the Mississippi River was so low that our barges couldn't move our garbage from a couple of months.
@@smokencracker5597 You're crazy or on drugs...I take it you have never been near any of the Great Lakes. I live in upstate NY and have seen some areas around the Great lakes and the ones I have seen are pristine...even nicer on the Canadian side. Ain't nobody moving away from them that's for sure...especially now.
@@MCPorter83 Yeah, and in 2011 there was so much water the COE had to blow the Birds Point Levee to prevent massive flooding disasters in the Ohio River leg of the watershed. There's plenty of extra water in that system, over time, there's just not sufficient storage capacity to best manage it.
@@MrDepodot7
“Preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River she’s goin’ dry”
The other verse you speak of is
“How I’d love to spit some Beechnut in that dudes’ eye
And shoot him with my ol’45
Cause a Country Boy can survive”
I have a very simple analogy for this idea of a pipline/aqueduct from the midlands to the West and why it's a very, very bad idea.
Scenario: You are a family of 4 living on $62K/year. You get a 2% raise every year and you save about 5% of your combined income. You don't have enough for a big house because of where you live so you rent. You have one car and the others use public transportation. You live in an area with rent that isn't the highest, but is pretty steep. You have about $250/month left over after all expenses and savings. All in all, you're doing pretty well. Now the government has decided to up the sales tax in your county by 1%, rent goes up by 5%/year and you're having trouble with your car which needs repairs. So now you're having to use credit to get by. You stop or lower your 5% savings just to make ends meet and now have nothing left at the end of the month.
Actions: You get a new job or win the lottery to the point of $30K/year more than before. So now you're earning $92K/year. You move to that house you've been wanting now that you can afford it, you buy a new car and junk the older one, reinstate your 5% savings and basically start buying/living up to your new income. What you do NOT do is get the new job and pocket that extra $30K/year.
Situation: This is the same as the West living up to/past their water supply, only to be supplied now with more water.
Summary: It's human nature that people will say - we now have plenty of water. Water restrictions are abandoned, people don't conserve, water is freely given where it shouldn't be, more people move in now that they know water is no longer an issue.
Outcome: In only a few decades, you will be back to square one only this time, you'll have nowhere to draw more water from. This is essentially being bailed out, not addressing the real problem, putting a band-aid over it and kicking it down the road. Disaster looms at the end of that dead-end road. It's not if but when. Meanwhile the river(s) from where this water was taken now suffer with lower flush rates, sediment build-up, stagnating water in some places leading to diseases, possible water restrictions for them, etc. It's just a massive dumpster fire waiting to happen.
I don't have the answer, but I know stealing water from the center of the country to feed the deserts of the West isn't it.
Spot on
brilliant
Yes. No area should use more water than its property receives in rain. Same for oil, iron, and every other resource.
Either that or your ideas are unsupportable.
@@richardtheweaver4891 what are the dimensions of an area
I know Israel uses desalination plants, and this has worked. Expensive? Yes but building a pipeline across the nation would also be expensive
You are going to find that the Great Lakes have already been tapped into by such diversions as Chicago's link into the Mississippi River system. There's a lot of water in the Great Lake's basins, however, the overall flow is another matter. All in, the concept you suggest is a bit late in the game - as others have tapped into this resource. For instance, right now the hydro generators at Niagara Falls have the capacity to turn off the water flowing over the falls, and likewise, there is the canal system linking to the eastern seaboard. A US-Canadian treaty regulates the flow over the falls, ensuring a substantial flow during the daytime, and permitting the hydro stations to increase their drawdown after dark - recognising that the falls are a significant US-Canadian tourist attraction. Meanwhile, the Great Lakes experience fluctuating levels from one year to the next.
he wasn't suggesting it. he was explaining the reasons why it wouldn't work out. did you even listen to him?
The great rain making machine is located in the Pacific Northwest and much of that rainfall ends up by going out to the Pacific ocean again.
Tapping into this area on the land would be the way to go. Valleys could be flooded and the water pumped uphill to a higher elevation, then allow gravity to flow the water downhill to the ever increasing Southwest desert.
just keep your hands off our Canadian water.
@@PatriciaGodboutArt Please dont be so narrow minded.
The water on this planet belongs to every human being on this planet.
@@John-nc4bl Tell that to Nestle.
@@John-nc4bl That's an easy mindset when there's enough of it.
One huge problem I haven’t seen addressed so far is the shipping that takes place on the lakes from the Atlantic Ocean to the western ports of Lake Superior. This is a major trade route involving every one of the lakes and the rivers and canals connecting them. Each of these waterways would be negatively impacted by the removal of water. Eventually, shipping would cease due to the lack of enough water to support the huge ships that sail the lakes. No water, no shipping, no goods, no jobs, no income. There is much more to this proposal than meets the eye at first glance.
Then they should pump it from the Mississippi River just before it gets to the ocean. Problem solved.
@@goldcoin2444 the Mississippi is literally drying up they don’t need to lose more water by sending it to a desert
@@joefishstone8132 maybe up North it is but I'm suggesting pumping it from south of New Orleans just before it dumps into the Gulf of Mexico.
@@goldcoin2444 I see what you mean, the only problem is that with falling water levels more salt is pushed up into the river. Cities near the gulf that had a fresh water supply prior to this are reporting salt tainted water supply. So it would have to be up river somewhat
@@goldcoin2444 and pulling water from above the salt line would only make the situation worse
Sounds like the states surrounding the Great Lakes are very protective of their Lakes and rightfully so. I live in the Southwest and at least here in SoCal I’m glad we’re doing things here and there to combat water wastage and mismanagement. Glad to do my part, but it’s disheartening to hear people like Kim Kardashian use over 200,000 gallons in a month for her residence. Makes the efforts seem futile
Because liberals are afraid to take legal action against "celebreties."
As a person who lives in one of the states that touch the great lakes, I honestly wouldn't mind giving up some water to the south west. However, we all have to be better with water management, because climate change is only going to make things worse. For example:
* lawns simply need to go away - it's stunning that we still have areas where people water ground cover, when it doesn't produce food or really do much of anything, other than look pretty
* recycling of water. I know it won't happen because we're so divided, but I'd love for a new house construction mandate that says water from the shower and washing machine can no longer just be flushed away and instead has to be captured into a 200 gallon tank placed in the basement of the house. That water can then be recycled and used to flush toilets, etc.
I have a ton more ideas, but we really all need to start realizing that water is going to become more precious than gold within the next few years, so we have to start treating it as such now.
Edit: cleaned up to make sense
@@dontbanmebrodontbanme5403 You're a generous soul. I'm not as kind-hearted lol I know if I was from there I'd protest giving any water to the southwest. Much more drastic measures definitely need to take place. And also with population growth in these areas, I mean Arizona is growing faster than the national average like wtf, it just doesn't feel sustainable. The Water Wars are coming!
The Great Lakes Compact says no. That's an international treaty, so.
@@dontbanmebrodontbanme5403 as another person within the great lakes basin, I have a huge issue. THey've sucked the rio grande and the colorado dry. They'll do the same to the great lakes. The mississippi is already drying up. THey want to kill it completely. We can't let them abuse the great lakes, too. Nestle is already doing enough damage.
The best option for divert water from the Midwest to the Southwest US involved capturing and moving seasonal floodwaters from. where it's not wanted or needed to where it is wanted and needed. In theory, it seems like a good idea. But as mentioned, the cost would be ASTRONOMICAL just to move to area east of the Rocky Mountains in CO, NM & TX and moving it west of the Rockies would be it's own HIGH priced challenge as well. In the meantime, there are a number of things that CAN be done here in the Southwest to capture, conserve, and recycle the water we currently have. None of which is really even on the back burner in most locations
As a geographer, you can probably answer this one: Would there be a way to transfer water directly south from the northwest to the southwest? I'm not familiar with the area but I've often wondered if you could find a way to refill Owns Lake. I enjoy your presentations.
NO!!!
Not only is it a bad idea but the Great Lakes are a Regional Treasure. The amount of push back that you'd get back from the Midwest and Canada would be astronomical. The fact is the U.S. doesn't own the Great Lakes and the Southwest certainly doesn't.
I never understood why the pipeline needs to be from the Great Lakes you can just have regular pipelines from regular waters stations hell connect all the aquifers and water sources in the country by pipeline
@@Benjamin_Gilbert-Lif We could also stop building cities in deserts and planting crops in regions they have no business being planted in. We don't need every type of produce available year round. Sooner or later we're going to need to start working with nature instead of thinking we control it.
It is super expensive to pump/and or desalinate water. Our electrical grid has enough strain and cost. Using simpler local, decentralized water solutions such as rainwater harvesting earthworks as in the country. There are a ton of clever ways to do it. Acquaint yourself with Brad Lancaster's work, he a great speaker and he he has recently updated his two books to include a lot more info. 1930s, CCC-built bioswales in the Sonoran Desert are still going strong and will last hundreds of years more. They've raised the water table a lot, and are filled with life.
Use curb-cuts and bioswales in cities and it impacts honeowners' wallets in much happy ways. You have the one time cost of install, and much of the work could even be done by hand. You can then plant site and region appropriate *trees* for a food sources. These bioswales and the trees planted therein can also cool street pavement degradation; and cool the 'heat island effect;' reduce storm drain expansion needs; etc.
They may have the side egfect of displacing homeless camps...
It will never happen. Their are treaties against it. They overdeveloped in the desert from GREED not climate change. Idiots.
Well the amount of water required to fully fill both lake powell and lake mead to full capacity would be like taking a 30 oz glass of water out of a 50 gallon jug to the great lakes. Which by the way all just drain their water into the ocean and is basically wasted. Otherwise they can do things like have California cut off all the food they supply to the states that refuse to help. Which is about 30-40% of the fresh foods for most of the country. So you can start living off of corn, beef, chicken and wheat and forget about most of the produce you currently enjoy on a daily basis
Or crazy thought
Stop using water for high intensity crops like Rice and Almonds in a desert.
How about creating a New Las Vegas, but in a place with more water? There's places in the Southeastern region that could use the jobs, like in Arkansas .Other than that, I can only think planting fast growing plants like bamboo in certain parts of the country, or building community air wells in drier regions. A tough problem really.
Here is my take on this idea. Why not take water from the Mississippi River that floods every year and ship that through a large pipe to Lake Mead and fill it back up? It would save lots of people misery every year. In the mean time take the water after Hover Dam and start putting it in pipes because a big percentage of that water is used up by evaporation. You could still have it go through all the dams that have been built to power the power system and even have devices in the pipes to generate even more electricity than they are producing now.
Now we get to the area that I grew up in, the Imperial Valley in the Southeast desert of California. Almost every Canal is an open dich run by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID). If they were to put all of their ditches into pipes it would be able to save a tremendous amount of water seeping into the ground and evaporation. I would think it would be enough to keep the Salton Sea at a constant level which has been a problem for some time.
I have no idea what something like this would cost but if something like this isn't done it will be far more expensive than the project of building a pipeline from the Mississippi River would be.
I no longer live in the Imperial Valley but it is still in my memory's and I would like to visit some day if I ever come back to America. I live in Thailand now and our problem is we have too much water. Every year Bangkok has flooding problems. We are just going into our dry season but still Bangkok will always have a problem with water but from the ocean. As the ocean rises Bangkok will be under water some day in the future. What's the answer? I have no idea. Only time will tell.
We’ll keep our water right here, thank you very much.
Tell that to Nestle!
I'm in Windsor Ontario and surrounded by the great lakes. I would be very unhappy if the lakes were being drained to pump to the US southwest. Desalination plants may be expensive, but cheaper than draining the lakes and who knows maybe drawing salt water and converting it to fresh water could help with rising sea levels as well.
I imagine that there is a surpuls that drains out of the lakes. Perhaps that could be allowed to be exported rather than wasted by going into the Atlantic. If a committee made up of the states around the lakes had to sign off on the volume exported each year, it could serve to maintain the environment and add an income to the Lakes area
We'd be pretty pissed off here in Michigan too lol
Don’t worry.. every surrounding Great Lake state and you guys up there would never ever allow this to happen.. I would goto war for it.
won't happen because there are strict international laws on who can draw water from the Great Lakes. If you aren't in the Basin you cannot draw water. I'm in Windsor too and we can use as much as we want because it eventually goes back into the lake. Sad thing is every city dumps raw sewage into them. I been complaining for Canada to stop so we can really complain at the bigger culprit (America) to stop. Just go to Point Pelee National Park in spring before they rake the beaches. It's covered in 1000's of tampon applicators
@essex Farmer it takes the water 250 years to travel through the Great Lakes. And all that water has to go into the Atlantic Ocean. It is transporting the nutrients to the Grand banks that is an extremely rich fish habitat. Draw off the water and billions of marine life will die
Another videos I saw - said we don’t have to build a new pipeline for water. We have plenty of gas pipeline throughout the country that can be repurposed for water. (Yes that might take work, but we don’t have to start from scratch.)
Instead of building new pipelines directly to SouthWest (wherever that is), it can be redirected into the Colorado River & let Mother Nature do the rest. They did suggest to empty reservoirs (to allow rainfall to fill them)
Saudi Arabia and Dubai have the solution for this problem and have since the 70s. They use desalination plants for their water supply. It would be a great project if a water compact was formed by the Southwestern States and even Mexico. They could pool resources and build several of these in California and in the state of Sinaloa Mexico. Both federal government's can assist. Costs would be high but it's really a doable solution spread out over at least 100 million people.
I live about a mile from Lake St. Clair in the Detroit area. One very practical problem would be that that lake levels rise and fall. When the water level is high this would not be much of a problem, but when lake levels are low diverting water would impede shipping which is vital for the Great Lakes region.
The political problems are fortunately insurmountable.
Agreed. I live in Windsor and it was only a few years ago when the water levels in Lake Huron and subsequently the Detroit River, were only slightly lower than today and many lake freighters had to reduce their cargo weight as they would sit too deep in the water and hit bottom. This cycle of higher then lower water levels is repetitive so any diversion is a non-starter.
@Judith no one moves to Michigan.
@@Jobratedman Wrong. I did, it's an underrated state and was a good decision.
@@Jobratedman michigan isnt just one big detroit you know.
@@srhautosports9613 that’s the thing.. he doesn’t know because he’s an idiot
As a Canadian, living in the midst of the Great Lakes, "Hell No!"
you don't get a vote . as usual. hehehe
Thanks for not sharing neighbor
The Great Lakes states and provinces are home to over 100 million people who will join you in that "Hell no!" Cameron. I'm a native Michigander living in PHX, and most people HERE would consider the idea ridiculous!
We do a LOT to conserve and recycle our limited water in AZ, more than any other state, and we're proud of that. If NEED be, we could limit our profitable farming, and we DID a bit of that recently in Pinal County.
A recent USA Today (it still spews garbage) editorial tried to frame SW drought as a "national problem", requiring such a canal. But it's no more a national problem than Rust Belt decline was in the 1980s and 1990s, when TX, AZ, NV, CO and CA enjoyed our migration westward.
Rebuild your water table in California by terracing, adding trees and properly maintaining them by controlled burns of deadwood , build irrigation ditches downstream from a few desalination plants and then purify and sell the salt to help pay for the project. This will allow you to pull more freshwater in to use and it will slowly pay for itself with the increased agriculture output plus the salt gained from desalination.
We have to build the aqueduct. However, the way I'm envisioning it, the pipeline from the Great Lakes to the Colorado River will be just one part of a much larger nation-wide network of irrigation and flood control aqueducts. The goal is to source freshwater for the West from various locations in the East where there is a seasonal surplus at any given time. This way, we won't take too much from any one place. For instance, when there's flooding along the Mississippi River or the Gulf Coast, or the Ohio River, the national network of pumps and canals will collect some of that surplus water and send it out West. We just need to build a huge reservoir somewhere to store all of the water. Also, none of this is that technologically complicated. Will it be expensive? Yes, but the federal government spent (printed) something like $2 trillion during covid, so I think we can afford to build a national flood control and water delivery system for a couple hundred billion (which will be spent incrementally over many years). Also, the increase in land value and economic output from more irrigation will far outweigh the cost of building this system.
My fellow Americans, this is really a matter of basic fairness. The rest of the country has to share their water with us, because we're supplying y'all with tons and tons of food. So, it's only fair. The vast majority of our water goes to agriculture, and a huge portion of our agricultural output goes to feed the rest of the country (especially during winter). So it's only fair that the East shares some of its water with the West, since we're the same country and we're also providing you with food. By the way, if the East would divert just 1 to 2% of the water that flows through the Mississippi River system to the West, that would be equivalent to doubling the entire amount of water that flows through the Colorado River system. The Colorado River gives life to 40 million residents and supports all of this farming, so just think about the economic impact of DOUBLING the amount of water out West, while taking a very, very minuscule amount of water from places that have more than enough to share. Food security is also an issue of national security, but I don't need to go into all of that.
Finally, we don't really care what Canada thinks about any of this, because Canada has way more water than they could ever use in a million years, and they should really be selling us some of that water, but they refuse to. In any case, the system of pipelines and aqueducts isn't going to extend into Canada, so we don't need their permission.
Dear Southwest,
Get your own damn water. You are the ones that wanted to live in a desert. Leave our Great Lakes alone.
Signed, the Midwest.
Dear Midwest, Grow your own food. You're the ones that wanted to live in a forest. We'll do just fine growing food for ourselves.
@@jasons5916 The difference is that we BUY your food. You want to STEAL our water. We can always cut a little more forest if we need to produce food. Once you take water out of the Great Lakes Water Shed, it's functionally gone. Also, it is not like we can't start growing more food here if need be. What do you really need for that? Land and water? We have plenty of both.
@@JakePyre No one is piping water 1500 miles for free and even bottled water that comes from municipal sources has to pay for the water that is used. Piped water would cost the price of the water at the source or the rights plus what it costs to transport it.
@@jasons5916 We already get robbed for water rights to pump it out of the ground here. Nestle pumped millions of gallons of water out of Michigan and paid a whopping 200 dollars a year for the rights. No one in this region is looking to allow that to happen again. Besides, selling it at cost plus expenses to transport is such a bad price for the Great Lakes region, even if it was for sale. Especially since when it is pumped to another region, the water is nonrenewable.
This has been proposed for many years, and the states/provinces bordering the Great Lakes collectively say "Hell NO!". You want water? Move here where the water is.
They don't want that either. They tell Californians to stay the hell away
That’s what I say. But I also say stay the hell away we got enough people here, lol.
@@bultacowally you’re right.
You don’t need an aqueduct going all the way from the great lakes to California all you really need to do is to be able to divert the right amount of water to the closest available location of the great plains aquifer after filtering the water extensively allow it to drain into the great plains aquifer at the other end closestTo the Sierra Nevada’s you put a pumping station where you then pump the excess water from the Great Plains aquifer up over the Rockies and into the Sierra Nevada’s basin then all you have to do is let the natural river system do what it does best
What about a much shorter pipline from the Mississippi River to the Colorado River? Just to help the Colorado River to reach its projected needs?
The Great Lakes states also stand to benefit if the southwest becomes uninhabitable. Major cities like Cleveland and Detroit have 2/3ds as many residents as they have housing for. As we approach midcentury, the Great Lakes can expect a return of migrants in search of cheap water, low cost of living, and milder summers than they can get in the sunbelt.
@@MrDepodot7 Just Leave your blue politics in so Cali.
I remember when desert communities were destroyed in order to funnel more water to L.A. At some point we need to realize that there are simply some parts of our country incapable of supporting large human populations. Setting up aqua ducts isn't the solution to the south wests water shortage. Not tat the expense of communities where water is plentiful.
Relocating idiots who decided living in a frigging desert was a good idea. Is a better option than tampering with the natural flow of water.
That never happened dude. Go back and read some history and stop watching old movies.
@@johnnynephrite6147 One of us needs to go back and look at history and it's not me. You can start by researching Owens lake.
@@jamess3532 a few Indians lost a pond. big deal. No Owens Valley to LA aqueduct and No Los Angeles. Good luck with that. Go back and watch China Town.
@@johnnynephrite6147 I only gave you one example, I could have provided more but in all honesty, you're so uneducated and obtuse I would just be wasting my time. Going back to my original point which you unknowingly validated by your short sighted response; L.A. can't survive, just as other naturally dry communities can't survive unless they consume water from sources well outside county limits and those resources are drying up. Why? Simple: there are geographical areas all over the world where large cities and populations were never meant to exist. There isn't enough natural water in those regions to support them.
Rather than ground watering, spraying huge amounts of water into the dry desert air via sprinklers sends about 30% of that water dosage into the dry air rather than the ground where it is consumed by plants.
Dave Maher also did one of his rants on how 30+ % of California's water consumption goes to nut growers while the nut industry accounts for about 2% of the GNP for the state.
Water just is not being used judiciously.
Build a desalination plant producing 675,000 cubic meters per day powered by a solar array at San Felipe, on the Gulf of California, sending water to Warren H. Brock Reservoir, California, which would enable distribution of the water throughout the Salton Basin thus raising the level of the Salton Sea.
I would love to see a video on the idea of a pipeline from the ocean to the great salt lake.
Why to refill the lake that’s trying up?
There are a few opportunities in the US southwest to increast moisture/rainfall. Death Valley for example.
We have a treaty with Canada on water usage. There is also a Supreme Court ruling on how much water each state can remove from the Great Lakes. Most states are at their limits.
You yanks better stay away from our water eh. We need that for beer
Yes; the Great Lakes are shared with us Canadians, so it can’t just be siphoned off by either country…. If there was a drought here in Canada, we couldn’t redirect water either from the Great Lakes, as they’re all connected.🤔
Thank goodness, America politicians would allow the leaks to be drained dried.
What makes sense to me is; "Desaltation"!
Why not create a "Syphon" pump from the waters of Baha waters or the Pacific Ocean?
The elevated water in the Mountains of California can be "Flowed" down streams creating
Electrical power to desalt the some of the water. The pooled salted waters (some will get to
points where it will stop and create ponds), New Fish stocking sights. In Mountain passes,
we can create reservoirs of fresh water and salt waters. In any case we get moisture and
if freshwater - good growing medium for crops.
A pipeline from the western tip of Lake Superior to the northern Colorado River might be feasible.
Living in the southwest is a choice I made years ago. I would never expect the great lakes to be taped for our benefit out here, to even consider the feasibility is arrogant to no end IMO. The 20th century was one of the moment when we as Humans made great strides in taming the Colorado river, however the drought is also a reminder that without proper management, we are doomed to loose the progress that allowed us to move into the desert in the first place.
Wrong, California can build desalination plants and solve this whole problem, then even with the drought things would improve.
The "taming" of the Colorado was one of the BIGGEST mistakes society has ever made, nothing great about it.
@@Trox2018 I agree to disagree.
Solution: Tell people to stop trying to live and farm where there isn't enough water to sustain them. It was once a fundamental principle that we settled where water was in abundance. Why? Because it's one of the three things necessary for survival; air, food, and water.
If you want to try to live and grow food where there isn't enough water, that's your business. I'll be sure to sign you up as a contestant for the next Darwin Award.
Okay so we should better cut the rainforest then and invade the last lush areas on the planet? I ht your grandstanding
Well if we are to believe geology. At one time there was a lake in Utah that was bigger than Lake Michigan& Lake Huron combined. I guess the climate changed.
@@mistersir3020 If that's what you think it takes to live in inhabitable areas, I'm glad you're a nobody on the internet with no real power.
@@warrenpuckett4203 And most of California, Nevada, Arizona, etc has been a terrible place to live the whole time. But sure, your lake comment was a real "gotcha." Take a bow.
@@warrenpuckett4203 Was that when Ford opened his first factory?
As far as I see it, cost would be by far the biggest fundamental issue. On the other hand, the risk of drying up the Great Lakes could be avoided entirely by taking the water from the outflow of the lakes, and restricting water transfer to southwest reservoirs during the winter months when you anyway have huge amounts of excess otherwise just flowing into the sea. This of course would require a longer aqueduct, making an already pricey project even more expensive.
A drought? In the desert? Imagine that...
Taking water from the Great Lakes and lowering the level of them, would cripple the Great Lakes shipping industry. First hit after the shipping shuts down, is the steel industry, and coal transport, which will effect electric power generation.
Since the Great Lakes also is the source of water for Niagra Falls, millions of people would lose power, as there is a very large hydroelectric plant there.
The Lakes also support a large commercial fishing industry.
The economies of ALL of the states and provinces that signed the compact, stand to have their entire economies devastated. That's millions of people.
The people of those states and provinces need to protect the Great Lakes and it's waters by any means necessary!
Also, there is another hydro power further downstream (north east) of Lake Ontario on the St Lawrence River, near Massena, NY
Realistically, the Great Lakes is outside the scope of a diversion from East to West...the Great Lakes basin is already divided from the Mississippi/Missouri River drainage. Yes, I am aware of the diversion at Chicago...it is the exception that proves the rule, and it has created enough problems with invasive species.
If you want water and you live in a desert, what you really need are U Hauls (h/t ti the late Sam Kinison).
The US largest Iron ore supply come from Wisconsin by ship. You can't supply ore to Gary Works, in Gary, Indiana, on the shore of Lake Michigan by truck or train.
Its the largest steel mill in North America.
... I'm from Duluth, y'all exaggerate how wonderful is great lakes.. We could do without Lake Superior, only 200k people live by it and I can see out my window the 20 boats that fish the west end... Just build a dam at E end and let it all be diverted west thru Idaho to E Wa potato fields. It's so dark up north most lakes have low vegetation so low fish numbers, we could grow far more potatoes than fish we'd lose .. California drained it's Tulare lake a huge lake, acting like lakes beat having good farms is silly ... As Duluther, you pay me $100,000 and the other 200,000 by it and you can drain Lake Superior. And we d barely notice, and we d plant wheat on drained land of lake superior. Google Lake Tulare, California boomed after draining it. .... People want to eat but whine when people want to divert water for ag, whiners. .. Mexico City was a lake, now 20m live there, so us humans drain lakes it's not the end of the world.... Be honest you all would take $100000 if they wanted to drain local lake and showd how theyd make the lake bottom farmland with a few pretty ponds and creeks , change is not always bad, your towns use to be crap scrub woods and swamps..... Drain Superior!!!
@@MikeB3542 You note the diversion via the Chicago river: That's the place to point towards - the diversion has lost allocation, demonstrating how little great lakes water there is to go around.
Thinking that there is a whole bunch of water in the great lakes means there is a bunch of water to go around. Nope, it isn't the case. The drainage basin of the great lakes is quite small. Just look at Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. All three sates are almost entirely in the Mississippi basin. Only the smallest border near Lake Michigan or Lake Erie are outside the Mississippi basin.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River#/media/File:Mississippiriver-new-01.png
Note that much of Minnesota is outside the Mississippi basin, but the West part of the state drains North to Hudson bay via the Red River.
This is one of the very few issues that both parties and every demographic group in that region would fight tooth and nail for. People would take up arms on both sides if they tried making a water pipeline.
Again forget about the Great Lakes focus on flood waters being moved from where and when they are bad to where they are always needed!
I never liked even localized afternoon rain showers on my crops I always preferred them late evening or night not, in the heat of the day.
Just who do you think grows the food you eat? Michigan? Nope....not Michigan or Minnesota...or the others that you claim would take up arms. This is The "United" States of America. Minnesota wouldn't last very long on it's own.
@@johnharrington2400 lol we'll manage. Should have thought about raising the prices on certain foods to compensate for the water usage before begging for water. Build desalination plants. Stop building golf parks and water parks. Get rid of lawns. Allow people to use water catchment. Simple. I've shown this video to two people - one hardcore conservative and one hardcore liberal from NY, both said they'll do whatever it takes to stop this from ever happening if a politician was dumb enough to even suggest this. This is the only time they ever agreed on something and these are the types of people that disagree with eachother out of spite.
@@johnharrington2400 you’re gonna tell me where I eat my food from!? We have farms all over Michigan and the Great Lake states. I promise you we would be fine. Just tells you that ya know nothing about this 🤦♂️🤣 I eat and drink local here. Always have as much as I can. Screw the westerners. They do nothing but waste. Yes there are good people there.. but not many now adays.. all the surrounding Great Lake states would last way way wayyyy longer than anywhere in that sandbox with no water. Uh dur.
Am I the only one seeing the big problem with ....
- a city in a desert,
- farms in a desert,
- golf courses in a desert,
-pools and green grass in a desert,
- pumping aquifers empty to support all the above experiments in human hydroponics?
They will literally figure out how to economically grow coconuts and oranges in northern Alaska, and everywhere in-between, before 1 drop of great lakes water would ever be diverted across to the south west for crops.
I remember reading once that a lot of people will migrate to Arizona specifically because the dry desert air is supposed to be good for allergy sufferers, but the green lawns have negated that.
You can thank thieving politicians making sure only male trees got planted thru out the country, can’t have the poor eating for free!
Arizona desert dweller I have always had bad allergies no matter where in Arizona. Same when in any other state I've been total of 15 different states, Mexico and Canada. I just can't out run my runny nose, itchy eyes and sneezing 🤧
@@opusydaisy6563 eat thirty of Shakely’s alfalfa tabs a day. It will bring on the alfalfa blues. Within five days you won’t believe the amount of water that will flow out of your sinuses. That will last awhile once the flow stops you can cut the number of tabs down if the sniffles return go back up in the number you’ll see it works!
I moved here because of rheumatoid arthritis. The dryness has all but cured me.
@@badactor3440 surely you jest? You must have removed all process foods, most night shade vegetables from your diet! Funny the ignorance of the voters they have not a clue how dangerous their vote is to themselves for their picks have sold out to the largest lobbying group in the USofA, the food industry! We all have the freedom to buy solid or liquid and consume what will bring on diabetes,and the inflammation which leads to the pharmaceutical industries massive profits as they barely alleviate any pain which in the end their medications are on par with what the food industry poisoned US with! You fools understand that even Russia and China banned many of the USofA’s food additives that your politicians being greedy morons approved for your consumption!
When you move water from one basin to another, the source basin does not recover the water lost and you end up depleting the source. This is why it is generally illegal to move water from one basin to another.
Then they should pump it from the Mississippi River just before it gets to the ocean. Problem solved.
@@goldcoin2444 Then the Mississippi would run dry. You cannot move water from one basin and expect that basin to replentish itself. Do they not teach this in schools anymore???
@@TomKirkman1 the Mississippi dumps its water into the gulf of Mexico and then to the Atlantic Ocean. I don't think we're capable of draining that.
@@goldcoin2444 The basin that creates and supplies the Mississippi relies on a certain amount of evap as if flows to the gulf. Start taking water there and you lose that, plus the amount that would then go into the gulf and the Atlantic changes. You can't move water from one basin to another without catastrophic changes.
@@TomKirkman1 You don't seem to realize that the Feds can do whatever they want. They can move what they want where they want because they have an army and you don't.
The 2008 Great Lakes Compact is not just and agreement. It is a federal law and binational agreement between Canada and US. It exists to safeguard the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world, the Great Lakes. It’s a unique agreement among eight states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) and two provinces (Quebec and Ontario) to protect the greatest source of freshwater in the world today. Water can not be diverted outside the Great Lake States and Canadian provinces that border them.
I have thought about this. Not that I'm a expert but I always thought it would be a thing to do if you limited it to Flood waters only. In the past they had major floors their And I figured during flood time it would be better to pipe the fresh water out west instead of it just flowing into the ocean . But only floor water would be devirted
Apparently this has been considered before, but the main problem would be the tremendous amount of energy required to pump the water up and over the continental divide, roughly bringing the water up some 4000-5000 feet of elevation.
I live in Northern California, and our water issues are numerous and go back decades. Drive into parts of the Central
Valley and there are communities that don't have running water. In Orange County they have a waste water recycling plant that produces cleaner-than-tap quality water from waste, and we need plants like this all over the State. Desalination is another option but is energy intensive, and produces a byproduct we're still not sure where to reuse. A pipeline to the midwest would only pass our crisis to another part of the country.
But you are missing that the vast majority of water is used to feed the rest of the nation. Home make up a tiny percentage of the water being used.
With solar getting cheaper every day and reflective mirror distillation being even cheaper. I don't see why we shouldn't make a salt water aqueduct into the desert and use the advantage of the environment to desalinate. Separate/ purify valuables, nitrates, sodium-salt, ammonia and the likes for industrial uses while also attempting to finally close salt mines.
@@ericroe what if we took the majority of that agriculture to a place that maybe idk.. isn’t a desert.
@@bradycrosby1705 sounds great. But you’ll find that it doesn’t grow very well there. That’s why it’s grown in the Southwest.
@@bradycrosby1705 if the midwest produced the food that the southwest produced i'd have a little more patience for their arguments.
All the states around the great lakes signed an agreement or treaty stating the water in the great lakes isn't going anywhere. Not for sale.
All the states, and two Canadian provinces...
One idea that may be better is spill ways. Some areas are dealing with annual flooding in the lower Midwest to central south areas. If there were spillways to divert the excess water only, I doubt anyone would complain. It would be cheaper than a pipeline and at least move excess water that would normally go into the gulf of Mexico anyway. I haven't completely thought about everything, but it seems like a better idea and would likely have the least environmental impact while spreading the water out over larger distances. It would have to be a federal project though.
Because it is only run off water, it wouldn't be available the whole year obviously which is a glaring weakness, but it could divert large amounts of water that could be stored for some time.
Great content. It is never a good idea to repeat what they did to the Aral Sea/lake.
Perhaps you could do an episode as to where does all that transferred water go and another one on the Saltan Sea?
One engineering difficulty that wasn't emphasized enough is that Phoenix sits 500ft higher than lake Michigan. This means that an "aqueduct" style solution would not work, since aqueducts rely on water flowing down hill through gravity. A pipeline would have to be used instead, greatly increasing the cost and complexity. This problem gets worse if you try to shorten the distance by say just delivering the water to the upper colorado river basin as some commenters have suggested, getting water to the closest part of the watershed (Grand Lake) would require getting the water up 7500ft, before you consider getting over or through the Rocky Mountains. Even the most reasonable path out to the Little Snake River would require a lift of 5500ft. The amount of energy these high elevation alternatives would take would be absurd.
In a way, you are almost shipping energy at that point. By feeding the water up to that height, a lot can be reclaimed through dams along the river, but also at a huge cost.
It is beginning to sound like radical water conservation strategies will be the much more achievable and effective of all the available choices.
This is the situation that should have been addressed in the video from a geologic perspective as that is what the videographer claims knowledge or training in, not the other issues mentioned, imo
It would not make sense to send the water directly to Phoenix. It would enter into the Colorado River at a different northern point.
@@GeorgeVCohea-dw7ou Bingo.. first build 2 HUGE lakes in North Dakota and in South Dakota.. then get Elon to build a tunnel to the Colorado River.. the Romans would have done it this way.. they actually made water run up hill using Reverse Syphons..
Raising the Great Salt Lake back to it's 1984 level would bring more wet snow to the the Utah mountains and west slope of Colorado's range which would provide sufficient water to the southwest. The problem, like you said, is that UT diverts a lot of water for alfalfa/commercial agriculture which has caused the GSL to be at it's lowest levels ever. No lake = no lake effect storms. No lake effect storms, no snowmelt to send down stream. BTW, UT only now is actually taking water from the Colorado River (was in the news this past summer - and Vegas was not happy about it)
Living in the 2nd or 3rd driest states (depending on the year), it makes no sense that our cities allow developers to put in parking strips that need to be watered, and often require yards to have 70% turf as well as letting 70% of that water be used for water heavy agriculture, i.e. alfalfa.
When the Great Salt Lake dries up or even falls to 4,185 foot elevation, you will see bad things happening - nationwide. Compass Minerals, which operates on the north end of the lake, produces an important component to the fertilizer used to grow fruits and nuts. US Magnesium, on the lake’s southern end, is the only domestic source of magnesium, which is used in a vast array of products from soda cans to car parts to pharmaceuticals. The U.S. Geological Survey this year declared it a critical mineral for national security and supply chains.
When the lake dries up, there no longer be "The Greatest Snow on Earth" in Utah and the drought will make the one we are in now look like nothing. Not to mention the mass exodus from the Wasatch Front. All those people will have to move, there won't be enough water from the springs, rivers or mountains to sustain the population; in addition the toxic dust will cause major health issues. If you're reading this and you're anywhere near Independence MO, that will be were many, many Utahnians will likely move to.
So yeah, maybe a pipeline from The Great lakes isn't viable, but water from somewhere will have to be brought in. If the Great Salt Lake dries up, it will make everything in the Sierra Nevada rain shadow into a largely uninhabitable wasteland.
Teenage wasteland
the salt lake is in an enclosed basin with no outlet to the sea. it should be desert.
Are they really called “Utahnians”? I know the Utes are the native people who first inhabited the area. “Utahnian” sounds more like a newer item in the Periodic Table of Elements or an alien race Starship Enterprise encounters.
@@mrbaab5932 Theme song for today’s Great Salt Lake?
Do the Dead Sea and the Salton Sea suffer similar problems?
There is a treaty between Canada and the bordering states that surround the Great Lakes. Congress nor the president can ignore a treaty. Even from the Mississippi River will not work because this drought has effected the water level of the Mississippi River. What is at issue is the residents out west waste water, particularly California. Follow the lead of Nevada and recycle the water. Employ a desert environment in landscaping. It’s just that residents use too much water. They did a study that people use less water, in the east. Tax homes with pools.
We have farmed in the Imperial Valley since the 1960s, and done so, with increasingly less water. Meanwhile, LA, Phoenix, and San Diego--all huge users of Colorado River water--have ballooned into the 2nd, 4th, and 5th/6th largest cities in the US. None of these cities is near a natural fresh water supply. LA County alone has more people than 40 individual states. I can understand wanting to live on the coast, and in Arizona, but realistically something will have to give. While the various players in this matter try and work out a compromise, a huge problem is coming down the road many have never heard of: the shrinking Salton Sea. Located just south of Palm Springs, the Salton Sea is the largest inland body of water in California. It is fed from agricultural runoff and it is shrinking rapidly. IMHO, once its levels reach a critical point, and the Santa Anas blanket wealthy beach front homes in Orange County with about 2 inches of alkaline salt the Sea currently covers, a compromise solution will finally be in the works. In other words, once the super wealthy are seriously affected by a dwindling water supply, a solution to the water woes of the Southwest US will be in the works immediately. Isn't this usually how things work? Thanks for reading.